The D Brief: TV host tapped as SecDef; Flag-officer firings, mulled; Space HQ to move?; US strikes in Syria, Yemen; And a bit more.
Trump selects TV personality for SecDef
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday evening that he intends to nominate Pete Hegseth, 44, to be defense secretary at the start of his second term in office. Hegseth, a host on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” served in Afghanistan and Iraq but has run nothing larger than a political advocacy organization. As a civilian, he’s advocated for privatizing veterans’ health care, written books arguing that diversity initiatives have weakened the military, and, last week, denounced the opening of combat roles to women.
After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth took a job with the Bear Stearns investment bank and a commission in the Minnesota National Guard. He later led an infantry platoon at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, then served as a platoon commander in Baghdad and as a civil-military operations officer in Samarra, Iraq.
From 2012 to 2015, Hegseth was CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the Koch brothers’ network. Among its top priorities was privatizing Veterans Administration health care.
Hegseth became a Fox contributor in 2014, and a co-host of FOX & Friends Weekend two years later. In 2019, Hegseth successfully lobbied Trump to pardon three service members convicted or accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Last week, he told an interviewer: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.” Read more from Defense One’s Bradley Peniston, here.
Expert reax: “I think Trump was tired of fighting with his secretaries of defense and picked one who would be loyal to him,” Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Associated Press.
And: “It’s clear that President-elect Trump wants to go to war with the Pentagon. He wants to put a former major with no experience running a large organization in charge of the 2+ million Department of Defense,” said Charles Stevenson, author of SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense. “Instead of organizing a team effort to challenge U.S. adversaries, he seems destined to impose a hostile takeover for a culture war.”
And: “Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history. And the most overtly political. Brace yourself, America,” Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America, tweeted Tuesday night.
Panning out: Hegseth’s nomination followed a slew of others for Trump’s intended national-security team, including former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem atop the Department of Homeland Security, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel.
Fine print: Filling these positions requires a formal nomination after the inauguration, and typically, Senate confirmation under the Constitution’s Article II, which was written to give the upper house a check on, among other things, manifestly unqualified candidates. But the president-elect is pressing the senators vying to lead the newly GOP-controlled Senate to call a recess in the new year that would allow him to appoint anyone he likes to serve through the two-year congressional term.
A bit more on former DNI John Ratcliffe as CIA director: When Trump first tapped Ratcliffe to run America’s intelligence community in 2016, the Texas politician withdrew after Democrat and Republican senators alike looked askance at his evidently “exaggerated” resume.
When Trump tried again in 2020, Ratcliffe won approval after vowing to be apolitical. But that didn’t last; within a few months, Ratcliffe “approved selective declassifications of intelligence that aim to score political points, left Democratic lawmakers out of briefings, accused congressional opponents of leaks, offered Republican operatives top spots in his headquarters and made public assertions that contradicted professional intelligence assessments,” as the New York Times reported.
For what it’s worth: In his Tuesday announcement, Trump touted Ratcliffe as a “warrior for Truth and Honesty” who had debunked allegations of Russian collusion.
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2015, ISIS killed 130 people across Paris, France’s deadliest attack since the Second World War.
Attention at the Pentagon
Trump’s transition team is considering creating an advisory board “with the power to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The idea has been formulated in a draft executive order that aligns with a campaign promise to fire “failed” and “woke generals” in the U.S. military.
The board would be staffed by retired generals and noncommissioned officers. But “The draft doesn’t specify what officers need to do or present to show if they meet those standards,” the Journal reports.
“The potential for this to go wrong is infinite,” one former senior Pentagon official told the Journal.
Expert reax: “If you are looking to fire officers who might say no because of the law or their ethics, you set up a system with completely arbitrary standards,” one former Army lawyer warned. Read more, here.
Also coming soon: Space Command HQs will move back to Alabama. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers says Trump will sign an executive order within his first week of office to move U.S. Space Command headquarters to Alabama, clearing the way for construction to start as soon as next year, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported Tuesday.
Background: Space Command has been based in Colorado at Peterson Space Force Base since its inception in 2019, but the decision on a forever home has been the subject of a years-long debate. The Biden administration in 2023 reversed a decision Trump made in his last days in office to move the command’s permanent headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama. Biden officials have argued that the command should stay in Colorado to maintain readiness and prevent the loss of civilian workers, who make up 60 percent of its workforce.
“I’ve told y’all since Biden made that crooked decision, it wasn’t going to work,” Rogers said during an interview on Alabama radio station FM Talk 106.5 that aired on Monday. “As you know, on the [House] Armed Services Committee, I put a hold on any money being spent in Colorado Springs after President Biden came in and stole that mission away, and I told everybody then that Colorado Springs will not be the future location of Space Command, it will be Huntsville, Alabama, who won at fair and square.” Read on, here.
Trump’s cabinet, cont.
Trump has nominated New York real estate tycoon Steven Witkoff to be Special Envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff is a golf partner and campaign donor to Trump, though it’s unclear if he will be subject to Senate confirmation, Politico reports. Witkoff has no Middle East experience to speak of, but Trump called him an “unrelenting voice for peace,” in his Tuesday announcement.
Regarding Trump’s appointment of Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel, the president-elect cited Huckabee’s “love” for Israel and “the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” he said in a statement. “Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East,” Trump said.
For what it’s worth, Huckabee admitted recently, “I never use the term West Bank, I find it offensive. We’re talking about Judea and Samaria.”
Think tank reax: Allison McManus of the Center for American Progress called Huckabee’s appointment “a sign that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu can act with impunity.”
Related reading:
More Mideast developments
The Iran-backed Houthis attacked U.S. forces in the Red Sea off Yemen’s coast, the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday. “During the transit, the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Spruance were attacked by at least eight one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems, five anti-ship ballistic missiles, and three anti-ship cruise missiles, which were successfully engaged and defeated,” Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.
“The vessels were not damaged; no personnel were hurt,” Ryder said.
ICYMI: The U.S. carried out strikes against Houthi weapons-storage sites inside Yemen over the weekend. “The operation involved US Air Force and US Navy assets to include F-35C fighter aircraft,” Ryder said.
U.S. troops also attacked “an Iranian-backed militia group’s weapons storage and logistics headquarters facility” inside Syria on Tuesday, officials at Central Command said. Those strikes came in response to a rocket attack on coalition troops at Patrol Base Shaddadi; no one was harmed in that attack, CENTCOM said.
On Monday, U.S. forces conducted airstrikes “against nine targets in two locations associated with Iranian groups in Syria,” CENTCOM said Tuesday. Those strikes were in response to “several attacks on U.S. personnel in Syria over the last 24 hours,” according to CENTCOM, which did not say whether any U.S. forces were harmed.
Trendspotting: “There’ve been 25 attacks in 2 months & dozens of US artillery strikes” in Syria, Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute wrote Tuesday on social media.
Etc.
And lastly: Join Defense One and a slew of newsmakers this afternoon for State of Defense Business, a conference at the Watergate Hotel (2650 Virginia Ave NW, Washington, DC 20037). It runs from noon to 5 p.m. One of your D Briefers will be talking with Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., at 12:50 p.m., followed by an interview with Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter, and more. Check the agenda and register here.
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