After weeks of the issue mostly having faded from the public eye, Senator Liz Warren resuscitated the issue of Pete Hegseth being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump as his Secretary of Defense, writing a letter in which she accused him of various things and demanded answers to a bevy of questions. Particularly at issue was a Christian tattoo Hegseth has, which she insisted makes him perceived as an “insider threat” connected to “right-wing extremism.”
As background, Hegseth has a tattoo stating “Deus Vult,” a phrase meaning “God wills it” that grew in popularity around the time of the First Crusade as a rallying cry for knights from Western Europe, and has since remained popular in some Christian circles, particularly during the Global War on Terror, given the battles against Islamist terror that occurred during that long-running conflict.
The section of her letter attacking Hegseth for the tattoo, Warren began by accusing Hegseth of having “spread false conspiracy theories” about the trespass incident inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She wrote, “You have also valorized the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists and have spread false conspiracy theories about the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
She continued, quoting Hegseth and saying, “You have portrayed the January 6th crowd as patriots who ‘love freedom’ and are ‘people who love our country’ who were ‘re-awoken to the reality of what the left has done’ to their country.” She added, “After the attack on the Capitol, you ‘spread baseless conspiracy theories claiming the initial break-in was a false flag operation carried out by leftist groups disguised as Trump supporters.’”
Then, building on that, she alleged that his tattoo was associated with extremism, saying, “You were also removed from President Biden’s inauguration because of concerns that you were an insider threat after reports that your ‘Deus Vult’ tattoo ‘was a Christian expression associated with right-wing extremism.’”
Concluding that section of the letter, Warren alleged that Hegseth is considered by some inside the military as an “insider threat” because of his “Deus Vult” tattoo. She wrote, “We cannot have a Defense Secretary whose fellow servicemembers feel concerned enough about to report as a potential insider threat.”
Allegations of the sort that Sen. Warren spread have existed for years, and that Hegseth has torched before. In fact, he appeared on Mark Levin’s show on Fox News Channel to sound off on the idea that his “Deus Vult” tattoo, amongst others, means he is an “extremist.” Watch that obliteration of attacks of the sort launched by Warren here:
In another portion of the letter, she breathlessly quoted Hegseth as attacking DEI, saying, “DoD officials have been clear that, ‘[d]iversity, equity and inclusion in the military are necessities for the United States’ and that ‘[t]he military must be able to attract, train and retain them for the services to retain competitive edges.’”
Continuing on the same note, she said, “You have claimed that, ‘The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is ‘our diversity is our strength.’’ As noted above, you also called for firing of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ‘Any general that was involved, any general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s***…’ Additionally, you complained in The War on Warriors that ‘a woke military emphasizes the made-up military values of ‘diversity and inclusion’ and fails to recruit masculine men who make up our warrior class.’”
Later, after repeating numerous other allegations against Hegseth, Warren said, “As Secretary of Defense, you would set the tone for the environment within DoD to recruit the best and brightest of our country to serve. Bigoted and disrespectful language only serves to sow division among our troops and exclude servicemembers who love our country and are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for it.”
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