It took about a week of self-containment after the election, but the media are back to their old, hectoring ways. The Regime Media have broken out in full contempt over President Elect Donald Trump’s selection of combat veteran Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.
Watch as CNN Senior Political Commentator Scott Jennings absolutely NUKES the panel:
CNN NEWSNIGHT WITH ABBY PHILLIP
11/12/24
10:06 PM
SCOTT JENNINGS: Does anybody have confidence in the current leadership of the Pentagon and the way the defense situation has been operating for the last several years? I mean- from the Afghanistan pullout, which was an extreme debacle for which no one was held accountable. We’ve had spy balloons flying over the United States. We built a $300 million pier as a public relations stunt which wound up killing an American service member. I’d say I’ve had just about enough of the so-called insiders running the Defense Department and I think we ought to give Pete Hegseth a chance.
CARL BERNSTEIN: You think that’s about- that’s about insiders?
JENNINGS: All the criticism of him is that he’s not the expected Washington pick and I am just saying to you that the American people just voted against the expected Washington pick. So I- he’s got 20 years in service. Afghanistan, Iraq. two Bronze Stars, Princeton, Harvard. Yeah, he’s on TV but so are the rest of us, and I think he ought to be given a chance.
The narrative emerging online and in the media is “Trump nominated the Fox and Friends host to head the DoD.” This is done in order to frame the pick as both a joke and a “Shattering of the Norms”, and to disqualify Hegseth in the court of public opinion.
Never mind that Hegseth has served for over 20 years, has multiple combat tours, and has been a tireless advocate for veterans.
The panel tried to come at Jennings with these credentialist arguments and Jennings absolutely unloaded, by reminding them of the recent and very high-profile failures of the credentialed DoD leadership. As Bonchie from RedState noted in a similar argument:
The risks of picking Peter Hegseth to head the Pentagon are too great.
I mean, we could end up with spy balloons flying over the country, disastrous pull-outs from warzones, Russia invading Europe, Iran expanding, and a recruitment crisis.
Best go with another DoD insider.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 13, 2024
Hegseth himself has expressed thoughtful takes on, for example, our readiness to confront China:
🚨 Meet Pete Hegseth, your new Secretary of Defense:
“The Pentagon runs perfect war game simulations, we lose every time to China… They’re building an army…We have our heads up our asses.”
Pete is an old school American first warrior. pic.twitter.com/KpWXE6dCjQ
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) November 13, 2024
None of that got discussed because the focus was on the aesthetics of credentials. The rest of the Hegseth discussion centered on his desire to remove “woke” generals from their posts. It is entirely reasonable to want to put warfighters back in the business of warfighting, which might be hampered by pronoun enforcement among other things.
Good on Jennings for calling out this nonsense. There will be plenty more ahead.
