A Brief Postscript on Pete Hegseth, Trump's Pick to Lead the Pentagon, and His Ties to Blackwater Founder Erik Prince and the Far-Right

"Hegseth isn't just a dumb cable news host," one source told me. "He's basically been groomed from birth to take part in the right-wing movement to destroy the federal government."

Pete Hegseth speaking at last year’s Pastors Summit in Nashville. The event was sponsored by Turning Point Faith, one of a variety of groups affiliated with MAGA-profiteer Charlie Kirk. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commmons.

As I noted in a story here on Wednesday, Pete Hegseth, a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Pentagon, is a close associate of Blackwater founder and GOP megadonor Erik Prince. The latter invited Hegseth to be part of a secret WhatsApp group chat Prince established in late-2023 — which I exposed earlier this year — that brought together prominent figures in the domestic and international far right, ranging from current and former government officials to lobbyists for weapons manufacturers to soldiers of fortune.

Over the past 48 hours I’ve spoken to two sources familiar with Hegseth’s military and political careers and they passed along some interesting information I thought was worth sharing. Neither is an admirer of Hegseth or has a positive opinion of his brainpower, with one — a prominent right-wing activist with deep roots in the Trump ecosphere — labeling his nomination a “complete joke.”

The other source, who isn’t affiliated with the Democratic Party or involved in the world of politics at all, said much of the media coverage about Hegseth, including my story on Wednesday, overlooked an essential point. “Hegseth isn’t just a dumb cable news host,” this person said. “He's basically been groomed and trained from birth to be part of the right-wing movement to destroy the federal government."

Prince, who had extremely close ties to the Trump I administration and is guaranteed to be in the inner orbit of Trump II, is one of Hegseth’s most important promotors. “"Enormous reforms need to be done and I think he's the man for the task,” Prince stated Wednesday during an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show and said he and his “team” were talking up Hegseth. Indeed, Prince spent part of this week in Palm Beach, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club and estate, having discussions with members of Trump’s team about topics that included Hegseth, according to the second source.

Hegseth graduated from Princeton in 2003 and the Daily Princetonian ran a good profile about him on Wednesday. “The foundations of his political trajectory began as a Princeton undergraduate,” related the story, which said Hegseth wrote a study entitled “Modern Presidential Rhetoric and the Cold War Context,” graduated from the Army ROTC program, and was the publisher of The Princeton Tory.

However, the Tory wasn’t a standard university news outlet that selected Hegseth to be the publisher on the strength of his journalist excellence, as has been suggested in some media accounts published following his nomination to be Trump’s Defense Secretary, but a political rag created with the express purpose of burnishing the credentials of foot soldiers in Princeton’s large army of cookie-cutter right-wing ding dongs, of whom Hegseth was a textbook example. The publication was financed by prominent GOP and conservative political donors and ran stories denouncing “the homosexual lifestyle” as “abnormal and immoral,” and, to cite a piece Hegseth wrote himself, calling for a defense of “the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.”

Hegseth has worked with conservative groups since at least 2007, when he briefly had a position at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and later became the executive director of a Koch brothers-funded group called Concerned Veterans for America, which urged advocated for privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs. That heightened his profile in right-wing circles and after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in 2016, Hegseth’s name was floated to lead the agency.

The job eventually went to David Shulkin, a career civil-servant. Hegseth’s name was removed from consideration because even in the rarefied atmosphere of Trump I, he was seen as “too extreme” and many veterans groups opposed him as well, according to a January 2017 story in the New York Times. Now, though, Hegseth is merely one of a flock of Trump II nominees who have attracted negative attention, though he has been the target of some of the harshest commentary along with scandal-plagued Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who the country’s incoming president has put up for the job of Attorney General despite having been investigated over allegations of sex trafficking and his strong affinity for young women of an age not far beyond the age of consent in his home state. (In fact, I’m working on a story about that very topic and it should be out relatively soon.)

Hegseth shouldn’t be dismissed as too stupid or incompetent to do any damage, in the opinion of source No. 2. “He’s no genius and one of the main reasons he got picked up on the right is that he looks good on TV and can read off a teleprompter,” the source said. “But he’s one of the many people who worked their way up through the ranks and became valuable to the conservative crusade against the federal government. Hegseth’s specific mission is to dismantle the Department of Veterans Affairs and he’ll be able to further that goal if he’s confirmed to run the Pentagon.

Hegseth could also help out prominent figures on the right with their pet projects as well. Few could potentially benefit more than Prince, who pitched huge military projects to the Trump I administration, including a deal that would have replaced US troops in Afghanistan with private mercenaries he recruited for government contracts. Prince never won approval for any of his schemes, but he got close with the Afghanistan plan, and may have won the funding if not for highly damaging leaks to the media from opponents of the idea from inside the Pentagon, where it looks like he will soon have a close friend at the very top.