Pete Hegseth, the former Fox news propagandist now destroying Ameria’s military as defense secretry for convicted felon and disgraced president president Donald Trump is showcasing his racist and anti-diversity biases through actions taken against minority and female officers.
Hegseth, who belongs to a white supremacist religion, openly violates standards for promotion and strips Blacks and women while promoting unrest among the armed services during a unconstitutional war with Iran. He violates the presumed separation of church and state, declaring that America is a Christian nation only and has canceled activities serving Catholics and other religions in the Pentagon.
Reports Tiffany Stanley of The Associated Press:
Since becoming defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has found no shortage of ways to bring his strand of conservative evangelicalism into the Pentagon.
He hosts monthly Christian worship services for employees. His department’s promotional videos have displayed Bible verses alongside military footage. In speeches and interviews, he often argues the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and troops should embrace God, potentially risking the military’s secular mission and hard-won pluralism.
Now the defense secretary’s Christian rhetoric has taken on new meaning after the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran, an Islamic theocracy.
“The mullahs are desperate and scrambling,” he said at a recent Pentagon press briefing, referring to Iran’s Shiite Muslim clerics. He later recited Psalm 144, a passage of Scripture that Jews and Christians share: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”
Hegseth has a history of defending the Crusades, the brutal medieval wars that pitted Christians against Muslims. In his 2020 book “American Crusade,” he wrote that those who enjoy Western civilization should “thank a crusader.” Two of his tattoos draw from crusader imagery: the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase “Deus Vult,” or “God wills it,” which Hegseth has called “the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem.”
“The U.S. voluntarily going to war against a Muslim country with the military under the leadership of Pete Hegseth is exactly the kind of scenario that people like me were warning about before the election and throughout his appointment process,” says Matthew D. Taylor, a visiting scholar at Georgetown who studies religious extremism. “Hegseth’s rhetoric and leadership can only inflame and reinforce the fears and deep animosity that the regime in Iran has towards the U.S.”
Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches – CREC – whose beliefs have been influenced by a 20th-century movement called Christian Reconstructionism, a white nationalist group considered racist and homophobic by critics. It is co-founded by hard-core right wing pastor Doug Wilson, who preaches that women must be obedient and subservient . He also praises slavery as a way to “cultivate affection among the races.”
Like too many right wing fundamentalist preachers, Wilson’s church is racked with charges of sexual abuse of women.
Military leaders complain privately that Hegseth is “a bigot” and a racist.
“Take it to the racist bank: Black troops at all levels will be promoted simply based on their race,” he wrote in his book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, published in 2024.
On women serving in the mililtary, he wrote: “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote. “We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat units.”
Reports Greg Jaffe and Kate Kelly of The New York Times:
In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
At least two of the officers removed by Mr. Hegseth from the promotion list are women and two are Black men. An additional three are white men.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions, which appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, were described by four current and former defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percent of the active-duty Navy.
Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is only supposed to pull officers from the list for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions are the latest in a series of firings and personnel interventions that seem to be driven by his anti-diversity politics rather than the officers’ performance. Taken together, they could reshape the military’s top ranks for years to come.
Hegseth, who prefers to be called America’s “secretary of war,” is promoting the white supremacy and racism of Trump, who first refused delayed to avoid the support of nationalist supremacists, including David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He and his father were fined by federal authorities to discrimination in their housing projects in 1973.
Trump’s racism was in his casinos. Reports the Guardian:
Trump branched out from residential real estate into the casino business in the 1980s. Employees revealed a pattern of racism. In a tell-all book, former president of the Trump Plaza Casino John O’Donnell said Trump once told him: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
Another former Trump employee told the New Yorker that black staff were hidden from Trump when he visited the casino with his wife. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” said Kip Brown.
Says Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois: “I will never forget my 2018 meeting in the Oval Office when the President rejected a bipartisan immigration deal because he didn’t want any more immigrants from ‘shithole countries.’ There were some questions [about whether] he actually said that for years. He not only said it, he bragged about it at a rally in Pennsylvania… Two Republican Senators claimed I was lying when I confirmed [the comments]. Now, President Trump isn’t hiding his true feelings… This is racism, plain and simple.”
A racist president. A racist Secretary of Defense. They are not alone in the corrupt and sordid administration of a convicted felon.
