Fox Host's 'America First' Shift Makes an Exception for Trump's Iran Strike
... “He’s a terrorist who has killed Americans. We knew where he was and the president took a bold move to get rid of him, and people around the globe are thankful for that,” Hegseth said on the set of “Fox & Friends,” a perch he often takes to validate — and at times influence — Trump’s military policies.
That was the same Hegseth who has defended the president’s cozy interactions with Kim Jong Un, embraced Trump’s “America first” agenda of withdrawing forces abroad — and reversing interventionist policies he labeled irresolute and shameful — and energetically taken up the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes.
But at no point during Trump’s presidency has Hegseth loomed larger, with the United States on a war footing and the next step unknown. Among the president’s unofficial policy advisers and those who add to the echo chamber on Fox News talk shows, no one else channels Trump’s mix of avowed isolationism, impulsive interventionism and unexpected resort to force.
“If I was part of shaping the narrative” concerning the strike on General Soleimani, Hegseth said in a telephone interview Monday, “well, that’s a wonderful part of my day job.”
... The transformation of Hegseth — an Ivy League-educated, decorated Army platoon leader and former ally of Sen. John McCain — from fierce advocate of militarism abroad to passionate Trumpist trumpet is a symbol of the Republican Party in the Trump era.
Scores of buttoned-up, Russia-deploring free traders with a deep reserve of tolerance for military involvements abroad have cast aside core beliefs to embrace Trump, their new personas validated and amplified by the heavily-groomed assembled supporters on the Fox set, where Hegseth now sits.
He has scored the rare dual posts of cable star and unofficial Trump adviser; Trump considered him for the jobs of White House press secretary and secretary of veterans affairs....
Hegseth left the military early to run for the Senate in Minnesota but withdrew when he lost ground to a Tea Party candidate who then lost the general election. He earned a master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, then became the leader of Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group with ties to Charles Koch that has also been influential on Trump’s views of veterans health care.
Hegseth found the president’s ear and more attention from Fox News bookers. “It was never my intention to forge a relationship” with the president, he said. “I know that I have learned a great deal from the truths he has told, his courage on these issues to speak plainly and truly about topics that are usually spoken about in code.”
Over the last year, Hegseth has seemed to move further and further from the bookish veteran of his initial television appearances. He was recently banned from Twitter — where he has expressed support for conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer’s congressional campaign and retweeted cartoonist Ben Garrison, who has been called anti-Semitic — for posting part of a manifesto written by a Saudi aviation student who killed three people at Naval Air Station Pensacola.
Hegseth has also earned criticism with some of his Fox commentary supporting Trump’s more incendiary moments. He defended the president’s comments after the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which a white nationalist killed a protester by crashing his car into the crowd.