The co-hosts of “The View” recently sounded off on President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Pete Hegseth, a well-educated military veteran, as Defense Secretary in his incoming administration. Despite Hegseth having attended multiple Ivy League institutions and serving in the military for decades, earning the Bronze Star twice and achieving the rank of Major, the panel did not think he was qualified for the position.
Whoopi Goldberg began the conversation, stating Trump picked “the cohost of ‘Fox & Friends: Weekend’… not even, like, regular.” Goldberg continued, “So is this the guy who is qualified to make decisions about the most powerful military in the world, who clearly does not know anything about the military?” Joy Behar then chimed in, “I’m a morning TV host, and I’ve been here the longest. Where’s my ambassadorship to Italy?”
Co-host Sarah Haines then opined, “Beyond what he’s saying just about women. The scary part is the Secretary of Defense is the highest-ranking member of the federal cabinet, and there’s a budget of $841 billion it’s it’s the largest government agency. It operates 4100 sites in over 160 countries. And as someone who, right now, we stand here with a country that has a lot of turmoil in the Middle East, in Russia and Ukraine, even in Asia, with China, it makes me more than a little worried.”
Haines continued, downplaying Hegseth’s military achievements, falsely claiming he only served for “five or six years,” when he served for roughly 20 years. “You’re picking someone who has, he served for five or six years, he was middle, mid ranking, never has worked in the government. And you can say the government’s bureaucratic, and get an outside person that’s going to clean it up, but it hasn’t been cleaned up yet. And therefore you have to understand the place you’re going into to operate it at its most efficient capacity,” she continued.
Alyssa Farah Griffin then weighed in, “What stood out to me. And by the way, I was rooting for Senator Joni Ernst, who’s a female combat veteran, to be Secretary of DOD. But my issue here is, listen, he served this country admirably. I’m grateful to Pete hexa for his service, but he has no policy making experience and no Pentagon experience.”
Griffin continued, claiming that Trump could be unsuccessful in disrupting bureaucracy, “By all accounts, the reason that Donald Trump chose him is because he wants a disrupter who’s going to help implement his his agenda that’s technically his right as incoming commander in chief. The problem is much more qualified people have got gone into that role to disrupt the Pentagon make it more streamlined, less bureaucratic, and they’ve never succeeded. They’ve ended up being outmaneuvered by four star generals in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So even from Donald Trump’s own intent and purpose with this guy, I think that he’s going to spend weeks just trying to navigate the Pentagon.”
Furthermore, Sunny Hostin lamented Hegseth’s non-woke attitude toward the government. “This is what America voted for. You know, I’m not surprised at this pick. I do agree with Adam Kinzinger that he’s deeply unserious … when he said this once, ‘the Pentagon likes to say, our diversity is our strength. What a bunch of garbage in the military. Our diversity is not our strength.’ I think that says a lot about who he is,” she said.
Watch a clip from the segment below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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