“Top General Faces Brewing Storm after Trump’s Pentagon Pick” the headline reads on a Washington Post story posted on Nov. 13. The Post is referring to a storm brewing around Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, particularly in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s announcement that he had picked Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be his Secretary of Defense. Just days earlier, according to the Post, Hegseth had suggested firing Brown and other senior officers over what he described as a “woke” agenda undermining U.S. military strength. “The potential for a high-profile confrontation between the Pentagon’s two most senior leaders—one a telegenic political appointee, the other a circumspect career soldier—further challenges the military’s fraying status as a trusted, apolitical American institution,” the Post opines. “Polls show that public confidence in the military, intended to act as a national ballast amid shifting political currents, has fallen to its lowest level in decades.”
Hegseth himself is reported to be an enthusiastic advocate for a purge. “First of all, you got to fire the Chairman Joint of the Chiefs and obviously going to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any general that was involved—general, admiral, whatever—that was involved in, any of the DEI woke shit, has got to go,” Hegseth said during a recent interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast, reported ABC News. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.” Hegseth made similar remarks about “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) and woke in other recent interviews.
