When Donald Trump recruited Pete Hegseth from Fox News to lead his Department of Defense, it was unarguably among the worst nominations in the history of the country. Hegseth had zero experience in military management, or in leading an enterprise on the scale of the Pentagon. He was just a weekend talking head on a propaganda network. So what could go wrong?
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Since his confirmation, Hegseth has proven to be just as incompetent and corrupt as his lack of experience and judgment predicted. In his brief tenure to date he has fully embraced the agenda of Trump and co-president Elon Musk to decimate the Defense Department. And to make sure that nobody gets any reliable information about that, he has banished credible news outlets from the Pentagon and replaced them MAGA media hacks.
SEE THIS: Trump Kicks Reporters Out of Pentagon Offices, Replaces Them with MAGA Media Mouthpieces
Determined to diminish the military readiness of the United States, Trump and Hegseth continue to implement policies that will surely delight Trump's idol and mentor, Vladimir Putin. Among them is an official rejection of the risks posed by climate change. In response to a news story on the subject, Hegseth posted a tweet that said only that, "The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap."
The CNN article that Hegseth was so cavalierly dismissing was an in-depth analysis of how the climate crisis would impact America's military engagements around the world. It said in part that...
"As the Pentagon and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] set their sights on climate-related programs at the Defense Department, officials and experts are warning that slashing them could put US troops and military operations at risk, both in the near and long term."
Despite the well-reasoned insights by experts in military matters and meteorology, Hegseth felt comfortable posting his pithy little reply that wasn't merely a blind disagreement with the science, but a childish insult characterizing the nearly universal consensus on climate as "crap." His bullheaded ignorance is very likely going to result in catastrophes for American soldiers, as well as America's military strength worldwide.
For the record, Hegseth's views - and Trump's - are contrary to those of prior secretaries of defense. And that includes one of Trump's own from his first term, James Mattis, who warned that...
"Climate change is real, and a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere. [And that] this is a real-time issue, not some distant what-if. Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today."
MORE HERE: Trump’s Defense Secretary Says Climate Change Is a Real Threat to American Interests
Mattis wasn't the first Defense Secretary to issue such a warning. Fourteen years prior, under George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon published a report titled ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.’ that warned that "threats to global stability posed by rapid warming vastly eclipse that of terrorism."
These views were shared by at least seven of the past Secretaries of Defense (Mattis, Ash Carter, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Rumsfeld, and another Trump appointee, Mark Esper), who all subscribed to the policy that climate change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And five of the seven are Republicans.
The military has been crystal clear for decades about the very real consequences of a world where water and arable land become scarce, and nations erupt into chaos and war. Migration, border disputes, and even the habitability of the bases the U.S. has around the world are all risk factors that the military have long recognized as critical to our national security.
While this dangerous rejection of reality is reprehensible, it isn't surprising. After all, Trump has long been a climate change denier. And a pretty asinine one at that. He still believes that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China.
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