Trump's Nominees and the Senate: SecDef

How to make your voice heard

Nov 29, 2024

[Updated 12/23 to include new members]

The Senate Committee on the Armed Services (https://www.armed-services.senate.gov) will consider the nomination of Hegseth.

Hegseth, who communicates using the medium of tattoos, is profoundly unqualified for Secretary of Defense (annual budget $776 billion, employees 3.4 million). His professional scope is as a host of a weekend news program (budget, $8.75 - coffee and a bagel, employees 2) and requires skills which range from mastering the make-up room to holding a microphone.

Keeping in mind the goal of dictators is to scuttle the existing structures of society and replace these with their own impulsive, self-serving, rule, we are relieved of the question: Why Hegseth? Hegseth’s tenure at Defense, as someone who’s has never run so much as a French fry station at a McDonald’s, seems intended to bring about just this kind of feckless rule. Placing loyal incompetents at the center of Defense creates the prerequisite for the saying “the center cannot hold”.

Hegseth’s installation seems intended to provide a coordinating role with the Departments which control coercive power: Justice, DNI and Homeland (a Squad, of all things), to support the use of the military to affect Trump’s promise to be a dictator. This will require removing officers loyal to the US Constitution and replacing them with officers loyal to Trump. In other words, Hegseth’s role would be to facilitate corruption. (It’s only crazy if you don’t believe it.)

The point for the Senate to consider is: why risk installing someone with no qualifications? Someone who can be employed to coordinate a demise of competence across our military? What role will pardonee Michael Flynn play in Hegseth’s office?