Donald Trump’s second administration was always going to be weird. But his selection of Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense sent shock waves through Washington, DC – even among Republicans and Hegseth’s cable television colleagues.

Shortly after the news broke Tuesday evening, two Republican senators sent a message Rolling stone their dismay at Trump’s announcement, with all doubting Hegseth’s confirmability and basic qualifications for the high-stakes job. “That makes no sense!” said one of them. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski couldn’t help but say “Wow” when asked about Trump’s latest selection to fill the top ranks of his new administration, to which Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) responded: ” WHO?”

It wasn’t just Republican senators who were stunned by the news. “WHAT. THE. REAL. FUCK,” a former Fox News colleague of Hegseth exclaimed Rolling stone on Tuesday.

Hegseth is a decorated National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, he has little management experience that would allow him to run a huge government bureaucracy. He previously led a small veterans group and a PAC that were accused of cronyism and misspending. He has no government experience and has worked for Fox since 2014. Trump praised Hegseth’s book and spent time on it The New York Times bestseller list when he announced the nomination.

Hegseth’s most important qualification might simply be that Trump likes him. The president-elect considered him to lead the Veterans Administration during his first term. Instead, Hegseth emerged as an informal adviser to Trump’s first White House. Notably, Hegseth was a top player in privately lobbying Trump to grant clemency to accused American war criminals — a move that would later spark chaos and discord within the upper ranks of the military and the Pentagon.

Also alarming: Hegseth is uncomfortably close to extremist movements. By his own admission, Hegseth was “deemed an extremist” and removed from a National Guard regiment tasked with protecting Joe Biden’s inauguration because of disturbing tattoos. Hegseth claims that the problematic ink in question is the giant Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest, which he claims is “just a Christian symbol.” But analysts of extremism have also pointed to a biceps tat reading “Deus Vult” – or “God wills it” – a rallying cry of the medieval crusaders that has recently been appropriated by white nationalists. (The Crusaders also specifically used the Jerusalem Cross in their heraldry.)

Hegseth also urged Fox News viewers to look with compassion at the motivations of white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville in 2017 — insisting “there’s a reason those people were there.” (Hegseth condemned their “outright racism” but said it was reasonable that they felt their country was “slipping away.”)

The Fox News host also broadcast live from the Ellipse on the morning of January 6, 2021, and seemed to give weight to Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen, while speaking almost enthusiastically about the possibility of violence. “We are in a constitutional tinderbox,” he said, citing arrests the previous day: “Will there be a fight tonight? That is also a possibility.” Trump’s supporters even led a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that day, hoping to stop Congress from certifying Trump’s 2020 election loss.

More recently, Hegseth wrote a book about defeating the “woke” culture in the military, titled The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. He writes that the Pentagon has become anti-Caucasian (“they believe…white people are yesterday”) and is instead promoting “diverse recruits” who he claims have been “pumped full of vaccines and even more toxic ideologies,” and who pose a risk to their “healthy American” roommates in basic training.

Hegseth has spoken openly about the crackdown on “DEI woke shit” within the military. Trump campaigned heavily to do the same, showing clips of R. Lee Ermey’s character Full metal jacket abusing soldiers as an example of the type of behavior the military should embrace. Hegseth has also said outright that he does not believe women should serve in combat roles.

Hegseth was shot down as a candidate to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs during Trump’s first administration, thanks to fierce opposition from mainstream veterans groups. His nomination is likely to face stiff opposition in Congress — which may be one reason Trump has lobbied the Senate to grant him powers for recess appointments, thereby abrogating that body’s duty to advise and consent nominees could bypass. John Thune, who will replace Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader, has suggested he is open to these recess appointments.

Regardless of his viability, Trump’s nomination of Hegseth marks a return to the troll chaos and provocation that defined his governing style. Despite immediate surprise within the party and among some of Trump’s close allies, the fact that Trump would move to appoint a former Fox News figure to the highest levels of the federal government would only sound out of place to those who did. . t follows his first reign.

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