Now, I'll admit, a history of salacious, abusive, and primitive behavior usually constitutes a recommendation for the Trump circle of charlatans, malcontents, and misfits, so it seems almost unfair to single out one of them for something as common as public drunkenness. After all, who among us hasn't shown up drunk for work or at a meeting of the Concerned Veterans for America or Vets for Freedom? (He holds leadership positions on both.) or at a staff outing where he got hammered and tried to climb on stage with the strippers. And who among us hasn't taken control of a group like Vets for Freedom and run it into the ground through extravagant spending and the sponsorship of events that would have made Caligula blush?
You don't have to answer. Even if you think these are deal breakers, there is one overriding problem that neither Hegseth, his wife, nor his mother can negate. It might not have been one in 2016 before the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, before October 9, and before martial law in South Korea and North Korea's tinkering with ICBMs. But it is one now—he just plain isn't qualified to run an organization with some 1.3 million active-duty service members and nearly 1 million civilian staff.
Yes, he served in the National Guard, but his managerial history is almost as abysmal as his interpersonal one. When Megyn Kelly interviewed him recently, his best defense was the Trump defense: they're picking on me. And his plans to "fix" the military seemed to center on getting rid of all this woke stuff. That plays well to the MAGA crowd but doesn't mean anything when Putin is wondering out loud whether or not to use nuclear weapons, and our response is we're cutting the number of women in the military.
With six weeks to go before the inauguration, here's where we stand:
Kennedy is a threat to our health.
Patel is a threat to law enforcement.
McMahon is a threat to children's education.
But Hegseth, even sober and redeemed (as his mother put it), might render the other three problems moot when we find our fighting forces in disarray, our military preparedness a fading memory, and the Secretary of Defense cavorting on stage with some clothing-optional "entertainers."
Comments