Trump’s Defense Secretary pick is bringing his ‘unwashed hands’ and misogynistic views against women in combat to the Pentagon

With months to go before he takes office, Donald Trump is rapidly filling roles in his White House, and in a move that will shock absolutely no one, each of his nominees has been licking his boots for years. If it wasn’t enough to have dog murderer Kristi Noem as the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Trump’s pick for the Secretary of Defense is a Bonafide germ-toting misogynist.

But hey,  Pete Hegseth has a neat “We the People” tattoo on his arm, an Ivy League education under his belt, and of course, a prime-time slot on Fox News.

Hegseth’s appointment is a wearying reminder of soon-to-be president Trump’s adoration of Fox News. A co-host on the channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend program, he’s contributed for more than a decade and his involvement led to a friendship with the 78-year-old.  If you’re having trouble placing his name, he’s the viral news anchor who claimed he hadn’t washed his hands in 10 years during the COVID-19 pandemic. He later went viral again after poorly throwing an ax and hitting a military drummer. Hegseth was sued by the man, who later settled out of court.

It’s definitely Hegseth’s TV personality that nabbed him the job, though he does have a military background. After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, he was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard. He served Iraq and Afghanistan and left the organization with the rank of Major, the most junior of the senior officer ranks, before pivoting to work in Conservative thinktanks. After working for a Koch-brothers-funded veterans advocacy group, he finally found a more permanent home on Fox News.

We can’t slam Hegseth for his experience. It’s clear the man has plenty, and has served his country with pride, but it doesn’t mean he’s qualified for the position he’s landed. The military already has a recruitment problem and Hegseth has a brilliant plan to drop it even further. Hegseth wants to remove all women from combat positions. It’s a crazy thing to attempt. As of 2017, the American military has more women in its ranks than any other nation in the world.  

American women were banned from combat until 2016, but that hasn’t stopped them from pushing through. Though they couldn’t serve for years after, the first women to complete Marine Corps Infantry training did so in 2013. Two years later several more completed the test for the Army Ranger School – and it’s been less than 10 years since Lori Robinson became the first female general. The short amount of time means there’s very little data to back up Hegseth’s claims that “it hasn’t made us more effective.” How can we know if there hasn’t been a major conflict since women were allowed in combat? And why is it that in other countries where women have served for decades, like the Netherlands, the data doesn’t match the assertion? It doesn’t take a genius to answer the question. But still, even with U.S. military recruitment numbers at the lowest they’ve been since 1940, Hegseth is willing to exclude the only gender whose representational demographic is actually going up.

While retired military generals and the Pentagon are ringing alarm bells over the rapidly approaching potential of World War III, the conservative right is too preoccupied with gender politics to properly prepare. Brain-dead misogynists and women-hating women are more than happy to back Hegseth’s dumb ideas to remove women from vital combat roles. It all comes back to my body my choice: if an American patriot is willing to fight, bleed, and die for this country, why does it matter what’s between their legs?