What does Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon believe?

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be US secretary of defense, has an unconventional resume for the position, which in recent years has been held by retired four-star generals such as Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin and by major Washington players like Leon Panetta and Robert Gates, both of whom had served as CIA directors.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of defense, has an unconventional resume for the position, which in recent years has been held by retired four-star generals such as Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin and by major Washington players like Leon Panetta and Robert Gates, both of whom had served as CIA directors. While Hegseth served honorably in the US military, he retired as a major, and his most recent gig was as a Fox News anchor. Given Hegseth’s relative lack of relevant experience to manage the Pentagon, one of the globe’s biggest organizations and the most powerful military in the world, an important question to try to address is: Does Hesgeth’s understanding of the state of the American military correspond with reality? A good place to delve into Hegseth’s core beliefs about this is his most recent book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” published in June. Hegseth’s book is an odd mix of slogans and unsupported assertions about the purportedly “Marxist” and “woke” US military. It is 228 pages long and has no footnotes and few facts to back up its claims, some of which are dubious at best. Hegseth spends a chapter of his book dumping on the “trans” troops in the US military, whom he portrays as a key plank of the Pentagon’s purportedly “woke” agenda. This is a sizable red herring. A 2016 study by RAND estimated there were between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender people on active duty and between 830 and 4,160 in the reserves. Let’s take the high-end estimates, and that’s 10,790 people. Around 2 million people serve on active duty and in the reserves, so even using the high-end estimate, roughly 0.5% service members are trans. So, for much of the US military, it is unlikely they will serve with someone who is trans.