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On Tuesday Donald Trump announced Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator who saw active service with the Minnesota National Guard, as his pick for secretary of defense.
Hegseth was one of a number of National Guard members ordered to stand down from Joe Biden's inauguration, according to CBS News reporter Jim LaPorta.
Hegseth served in both Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as a National Guard officer, and in 2012 announced he was running in the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota, though he dropped out before voting began. Earlier this year he published The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.
In a statement posted on social media Trump said: "Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country. Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First."
During an appearance on a podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan, a former Navy Seal and CIA contractor, Hegseth claimed he had been due to help guard Joe Biden's 2020 presidential inauguration but was ordered to stand down because he had an "extremist" tattoo.
He said: "I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington D.C. and my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration…
"My commander called me a day before tepidly and was like Major you can just stand down. We don't need you, we're good. I'm like what do you mean, everybody's there. He said like no no no…he couldn't tell me."
Hegseth added that when writing his book "he reached out to somebody in the unit who could confirm with 99.9 percent certainty, because he was in the meetings and on the emails, nope someone inside the D.C. Guard trolled your social media, found a tattoo, used it an excuse to call you a white nationalist, an extremist, and you were specifically by name orders revoked to guard the inauguration because you were considered a potential threat."
I think Trump has learned to not make picks from the Swamp anymore.
Should be interesting.
I think the first order of business is to get the DEI crap out of the military and Pentagon.
Then they can focus on trying to keep the country safe.