PETE HEGSETH

Newsweek -  President-elect Donald Trump's defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, has gone viral for comments calling for establishing Christian schools to build an "educational insurgency." Hegseth made the comments on Monday's episode of CrossPolitic, a Christian political podcast that aims "to see our fallen and broken nation recognize Jesus as our redeemer."

Hegseth was discussing his book Battle for the American Mind. He mentioned the need for "an educational insurgency" to combat progressive ideas in American schools.  "We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like," he said. "We're in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize."

National Memo -  The police report detailing the sexual assault allegations against Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense, will make your stomach churn. According to a 22-page report, Hegseth was accused of raping an unconscious victim in the early hours of October 8, 2017, at a hotel after a Republican women's conference event in Monterey, California. The alleged rape was first reported to police by an emergency room nurse who treated the victim.

The victim, listed as Jane Doe in the police report, said she believes she was drugged at the event at a Hyatt Hotel, and "cannot remember most of the night's events." The victim said she had approached Hegseth at the event and told him she "did not appreciate how he treated women" after she saw him rubbing women "on their legs.”During the confrontation, Jane Doe remembered Hegseth telling her he was a “nice guy.”

The next thing she remembered was being in an unfamiliar hotel room and Hegseth blocking her from leaving it. She told the police he took her phone. Then she said that Hegseth was on top of her and that he ejaculated on her stomach and told her to "clean it up." She remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” according to the report.

Through an attorney, Hegseth claimed to The Washington Post that the encounter was consensual. However, he paid the woman to remain silent.

Guardian - Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, has written in a book that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics.Hegseth, a former elite soldier turned rightwing Fox television personality, is Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon which controls the gigantic American military – by far the largest armed force in the world.

In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a “national divorce” in which “The military and police … will be forced to make a choice” and “Yes, there will be some form of civil war.” Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake “an AMERICAN CRUSADE”, to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”, to “attack first” in response to a left he identifies with “sedition”, and he writes that the book “lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies”.

Hegseth’s rhetoric about perceived “internal” or “domestic enemies”, along with media reports highlighting his tattoo of the crusader motto “Deus Vult”, may ring alarm bells for those concerned by Donald Trump’s repeated threats to unleash the US military, which Hegseth would directly control, on those he has described as “the enemy within”