President-elect Donald Trump this week tapped Pete Hegseth to be his secretary of protection — regardless of the Fox Information host having beforehand criticized Trump on his overseas coverage and navy stances earlier than Trump was elected to his first time period.
Throughout Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign, Hegseth, showing on Fox Information as a political commentator, slammed what he characterised as Trump’s “shallowness” on overseas coverage.
“So far as Donald Trump, he’s simply flat out altering his place, and I feel, frankly, falling into the narrative of the left. And he is finished this time and time once more.” Hegseth mentioned. “He is going backwards and forwards. He is been good on quite a lot of home stuff. However internationally, I do not know the place Donald Trump is.”
The feedback got here as Hegseth was pressed throughout an interview by then-Fox Information host Megyn Kelly — who would later, after leaving Fox Information, endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy — about Trump’s “apparent reversal” of his place on the warfare in Afghanistan.
“It is unacceptable. It exhibits, I feel, a shallowness in his understanding of that area,” Hegseth mentioned, pointing to Trump’s feedback that the U.S. may stay within the area endlessly. “That is not readability, that is not management — that is waffling backwards and forwards on actually essential points.”
A former Military main who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and as a guard at Guantanamo Bay, Hegseth has since emerged as one among Trump’s most vocal allies in cable information. He beforehand led two veterans’ organizations earlier than transitioning fulltime to his place at Fox Information.
After his preliminary criticism, Hegseth fell in step with Trump in the course of the 2016 common election and has continued to be one among his most enthusiastic boosters on tv.
President Donald Trump seems on Fox & Buddies co-host Pete Hegseth at a Wounded Warrior Undertaking Soldier Journey occasion within the East Room of the White Home, April 6, 2017.
Andrew Harnik/AP, FILE
Trump and Hegseth have brokered a detailed relationship lately, with Hegseth interviewing Trump a number of instances and reportedly participating with Trump throughout industrial breaks on this system he anchors, Fox & Buddies Weekends.
In an ironic twist, Hegseth in 2015 criticized Trump for saying throughout an interview that he will get a few of his navy recommendation from watching tv information.
“You would not desire a top-tier presidential candidate getting all their navy recommendation from watching ‘Meet the Press,'” Hegseth mentioned throughout a Fox Information interview. “There’s much more nuance and there is much more element … on the finish of the day, overseas coverage and nationwide safety shouldn’t be about TV exhibits. It is a complicated internet of relationships and I feel [his campaign] goes to need him briefed on that sort of stuff.”
Whereas showing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in August 2015, Trump was requested by moderator Chuck Todd who he talks to for navy recommendation.
“Properly, I watch the exhibits. I imply, I actually see quite a lot of nice — you realize, once you watch your present and all the different exhibits and you’ve got the generals and … you might have sure folks that you simply like,” Trump responded, in keeping with a transcript.
Hegseth has since taken a pointy flip to grow to be a fierce ally and defender of Trump.
“Individuals exterior these partitions … they do not perceive the attachment that conservatives and freedom lovers should Donald Trump,” Hegseth mentioned in a clip he posted of himself talking in 2023 on the Conservative Political Motion Convention.
Beforehand, Hegseth had mentioned he supported different candidates for president early on within the 2016 race.
“I had totally different candidates I believed in early on within the course of, and was essential of the early issues [Trump] needed to say,” Hegseth instructed a Jewish newspaper in 2016. “I nonetheless don’t love a few of his rhetoric.”
