{"id":199712,"date":"2026-08-24T06:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T06:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/199712\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T06:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T06:17:07","slug":"hegseth-for-president-its-a-laughable-idea-that-must-be-taken-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/199712\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth For President? It’s A Laughable Idea That Must Be Taken Seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may be contemplating a promotion. His Monday trip<\/a> to campaign with Republican congressional candidates in Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, spurred<\/a> a Washington Post report that the visit is consistent with the belief among \u201cofficials familiar with Hegseth\u2019s thinking\u201d that he \u201cis considering a run for president or some other political office after his time in the Trump administration is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth, a bombastic former Fox News weekend host who spent years speaking directly to the Republican base through that MAGA propaganda network, may be uniquely attuned to the right’s attention economy. He could become the presidential candidate of the right-wing media\u2019s id, running a furious culture war campaign fixated on domestic political enemies that checks all the boxes for authoritarian-minded pundits indifferent to traditional policy issues.<\/p>\n

Anti-Muslim. Hegseth has much to offer the MAGA pundits who casually declare that \u201cIslam is here to kill us and convert us\u201d<\/a> and call for \u201cusing military force to start raiding mosques and removing these people from our country.\u201d<\/a> At home, he has decried<\/a> the \u201cMuslims\u2019 birth rates\u201d in multiple states and fearmongered about the success of Muslim political candidates, warning that \u201cIslamists\u201d are trying \u201cto seed the West with as many Muslims as possible.\u201d And abroad, he has written that \u201cjust like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today\u201d \u2014 then literally overseen U.S. forces bombing Muslims in Iran and Yemen as defense secretary.<\/p>\n

Anti-DEI. At Fox, Hegseth was at the forefront of the right\u2019s assault<\/a> on policy initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, warning<\/a> that such policies had weakened the military and calling for \u201ca new commander in chief that\u2019s going to get rid of all of this CRT, DEI nonsense, all the gender nonsense.\u201d He\u2019s now put that into practice at the Pentagon, firing<\/a> or canceling<\/a> the promotions<\/a> of numerous Black and female senior officers, overseeing the banning and attempted expulsion<\/a> of trans service members, and launching a study<\/a> that seems engineered to ban women<\/a> from serving in combat roles.<\/p>\n

Anti-press. Right-wing media hate<\/a> the traditional press, and Hegseth, who urged<\/a> readers of his 2020 book to \u201cdisdain, despise, detest, [and] distrust\u201d the news media, never misses an opportunity to demonstrate his contempt for mainstream reporters. He\u2019s smeared<\/a> news outlets as unpatriotic for not running headlines like \u201cIran increasingly desperate,\u201d and mocked<\/a> and derided<\/a> individual reporters, even denouncing<\/a> his former Fox colleague Jennifer Griffin as \u201cthe one who misrepresents the most intentionally.\u201d Under his leadership, the Pentagon rolled out<\/a> a stringent new set of rules for reporters and, when journalists at major news outlets turned in their press passes rather than signing them, replaced those reporters with right-wing influencers and staffers from MAGA outlets.<\/p>\n

Anti-immigrant. Perhaps no current issue unites the right-wing commentariat like virulent attacks on immigrants \u2014 and Hegseth\u2019s rhetoric aligns perfectly<\/a> with them. \u201cWhen you import the Third World, you get Third World hierarchy, values, and chaos,\u201d he said in a November 2024 Fox segment, adding: \u201cYour quality of life is going down. You feel less safe. Your resources are being drained. … But don’t speak up about that. If you do, you’re the racist.\u201d As defense secretary, he used a speech<\/a> in France marking the anniversary of D-Day to attack the \u201cinvasion\u201d of migrants hitting European beaches, asking, \u201cWhen will European capitals do something about that invasion?\u201d<\/p>\n

Pro-war crimes. It\u2019s not an overstatement<\/a> to say that Hegseth has his current position because the president appreciated his Fox advocacy<\/a> on behalf of U.S. service members accused or convicted of war crimes, which he seems to reject<\/a> as a legitimate category. He wrote<\/a> in 2024: \u201cShould we follow the Geneva Conventions? What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us? Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism?\u201d At the Pentagon, Hegseth \u201chas fired and reassigned uniformed lawyers and dismantled many of the offices set up to prevent the targeting of civilians and related sites,\u201d focused his public statements on the need for \u201clethality,\u201d and carried out operations in the Middle East, Indian Ocean, eastern Pacific Ocean, and Caribbean Sea that experts say could include war crimes, as The New York Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pro-Christian nationalism. Hegseth has<\/a> \u201cinvok[ed] Christian theology in public statements about the war with Iran,\u201d including urging<\/a> the American public to pray \u201cevery day, on bended knee\u201d for a military victory in the Middle East \u201cin the name of Jesus Christ,\u201d and told a conference of defense ministers from the Western Hemisphere that \u201cour nations\u201d are \u201cChristian nations under God,\u201d the Times reported. He invited<\/a> Pastor Doug Wilson, \u201ca self-described Christian nationalist who wants to repeal a woman’s right to vote, has defended slavery and believes homosexuality should be a crime,\u201d to give a sermon at the Pentagon earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Together with his abject loyalty<\/a> to Donald Trump, those positions make Hegseth a plausible candidate for the GOP ticket. That could come in the form of a 2028 primary battle against Vice President JD Vance, who has fallen out of favor<\/a> with much of the right-wing media<\/a>. But the former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host is also just 46 years old \u2014 if Vance wins the nomination but loses the general election that year, Hegseth could easily spend a few years returning to the network as a contributor or hosting a podcast, sitting on defense industry boards, and campaigning for Republicans before running for the 2032 nomination.<\/p>\n

Hegseth was manifestly unqualified<\/a> for his current position, his stewardship of the Pentagon has been a series<\/a> of rolling<\/a> disasters<\/a>, and he is among the most unpopular members<\/a> of Trump\u2019s widely reviled administration. But in a world in which the former host of The Apprentice is currently serving his second term in the Oval Office, it is worth taking Hegseth\u2019s potential candidacy seriously.<\/p>\n

From Your Site Articles<\/p>\n

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