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By Gabrielle Wallace and Amelia Monroe
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly was among the combat veterans and Democrats expressing deep skepticism at Donald Trump’s choice of a defense secretary with no national security experience.

“Typically you expect someone in that role to have implemented or made policy – defense policy,” Kelly, a Navy combat pilot, said Wednesday of the president-elect’s pick, conservative Fox News host Pete Hegseth.

Resumes of defense secretaries in recent decades included stints as CIA director, secretary of the Army and White House chief of staff. Hegseth has no high-level defense or national security experience, though his crusade against “woke” military policies endeared him to Trump.

He wants women removed from combat roles opened to them in 2015 under former President Barack Obama and blames a focus on gender equality and other liberal goals for weakening the U.S. security.

Senate Democrats don’t see such views as sufficient qualification.

“We’re going to get an opportunity here in the Armed Services Committee to ask him some very pointed questions,” Kelly told Cronkite News at the Capitol. “I’d never even heard of him. … I read somewhere that he spent nine years as a TV host.”

Senate confirmation requires only a simple majority, and Republicans will control at least 53 seats.

Arizona’s senator-elect, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, also a Democrat – and a Marine who served in Iraq as an infantryman – declined to discuss the nomination, brushing aside questions from Cronkite News reporters at the House.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican who is not on Armed Services, was noncommittal.

“With all of President Trump’s nominees we’ll assess them on their merits. We look forward to the confirmation hearings and to the process proceeding swiftly.”

The Pentagon chief oversees the government’s largest agency, with 1.3 million active duty personnel plus more than twice that many civilians and National Guard.

But experience isn’t apparently what drew Trump to his nominee.

“Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country,” Trump posted on social media. “Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”

Hegseth earned two Bronze Stars during infantry deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and rose to major in the Army National Guard. He served as CEO for Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative group. He studied at Princeton and earned a master in public policy from Harvard.

“The Left wants to destroy the one institution standing between them and total control – the United States military,” he wrote in a New York Times bestseller published in June, titled “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”

Hegseth has demanded the firing of Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. for “pursuing the radical positions of left-wing politicians.”

In his book, he blames liberals’ demands for “gender equity, racial diversity, climate stupidity, and the LGBTQA+ alphabet soup” for making it hard to recruit “the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks.”

Trump’s two previous defense secretaries were far more experienced.

James Mattis – who resigned less than two years into the job after Trump announced he would pull U.S. troops out of Syria – was a retired Marine general who had led U.S. Central Command, responsible for operations in the Middle East.

His successor, Mark Esper, served as secretary of the Army under Trump and had been a deputy assistant secretary of defense under George W. Bush.

The current secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, served 41 years in uniform, retiring from the Army as a four-star general. Like Mattis, he had led Central Command.

“I’m going to be asking questions about his management experience,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, told Cronkite News. “Our United States military deserves the very best of our managerial talent.”

Other Cabinet picks have also stirred controversy, among them Trump’s nomination Wednesday of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

Gaetz is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sex trafficking, sex with minors and illicit drug use, which he has denied. Like Trump, Gaetz has been investigated by the Department of Justice. The department he would lead if confirmed opted not to pursue charges.

One common thread among the Cabinet picks so far is staunch loyalty to Trump.

Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman tapped to lead the EPA, was an avid defender during Trump’s impeachment trials. So was South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, his pick for Homeland Security secretary.

As part of his book rollout, Hegseth revealed that leaders of his National Guard unit excluded him from duty protecting President Joe Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20, 2021, having “deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist.” That, he said, was because of a tattoo of a “Jerusalem cross,” a symbol that dates to 11th Century Crusaders.

Washington correspondents Lauren Bly, Miguel Ambriz and Madeline Nguyen contributed to this report.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.