Lloyd Austin, the former defense secretary and a four-star general with 40 years of military experience, was nonetheless labeled a DEI hire of the Biden administration. Pete Hegseth, the current secretary of defense, lacks adequate expertise and experience, on top of the fact that he’s had allegations of sexual assault and is known as an excessive drinker. A former National Security Council member and a Senate member deemed Hegseth unqualified for the position. However, according to Donald Trump, Hegseth had a tremendous track record that qualified him for the position.
The MAGA crowd called for Austin to resign because he failed to share that he had an emergency medical procedure, yet they explain away Hegseth’s failure to keep the details of a war plan confidential. Clearly, the ability to keep a secret wasn’t a qualification for Hegseth to get the job as defense secretary. What Signalgate, the recent scandal involving the Trump administration discussing war plans in a text thread with a journalist mistakenly added to the conversation, made abundantly clear is that the only qualification for Hegseth is that he was what Mishel Williams calls WEI: white, entitled and incompetent.
