TV News LIES

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary breaks longstanding tradition of Pentagon chiefs with long careers in government, industry and the military.

That appears to be Trump’s aim: a Washington outsider who will shake up what he considers a hidebound institution that didn’t always do what he wanted in his first administration, according to military experts and current and former Defense officials. Hegseth has laid down markers on his agenda for running the Pentagon: firing generals who promote “woke” military policies, eliminating combat roles for women, and loosening reins on troops conduct in combat.

Trump’s transition team has a “warrior board” executive order ready for the president-elect’s desk.

An executive order draft is floating around MAGA world that would establish a Trump-appointed “warrior board” with the power to purge any three- or four-star generals as it sees fit. The board would send its dismissal recommendations to Trump and they would be acted upon within 30 days.

Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years for stealing classified information from the Pentagon and sharing it online, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts announced.

Teixeira received the sentence before Judge Indira Talwani in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

In March, the national guardsman pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.

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The revered abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who was the first woman to oversee an American military action during a time of war, was posthumously awarded the rank of general on Monday.

Dozens gathered on Veterans Day at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad state park in Maryland’s Dorcester county for a formal ceremony making Tubman a one-star brigadier general in the state’s national guard.

Wes Moore, the governor, called the occasion not just a great day for Tubman’s home state but for all of the US.

“Today, we celebrate a soldier and a person who earned the title of veteran,” Moore said. “Today we celebrate one of the greatest authors of the American story.”

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“Have you ever tried to overthrow the U.S. government?”

If you’re trying to get top secret security clearance for a government job, that’s a standard question for the required polygraph exam. And the answer, obviously, should be no.

But Josh Abate couldn’t say no if he wanted to pass the test.

“It depends,” he said, when he took the exam in early 2022 for an internship.

The polygrapher paused and asked him to elaborate.

“Well, on January 6th, I went into the Capitol building.”

That was the first time Abate, a 24-year-old sergeant in the Marines, had talked openly about what he did that day.

At that point, he was doing well in the Marines. He made sergeant early, got a Navy commendation medal and was selected for this coveted internship with the National Security Agency.

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Defense officials are getting anxious about the possibility of the incoming Trump administration firing Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, due to perceptions that he is out of step with the president-elect on the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion programs.

The Trump administration’s DOD transition team — led by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie — has yet to officially set foot in the Pentagon since the election was called, owing to the transition team’s refusal so far to accept assistance from the federal government. But concern is beginning to bubble up that Brown, who spoke publicly about the challenges of rising through the military as a Black man as Donald Trump urged the Defense Department to crack down on the George Floyd protests in 2020, could be swept out by a president-elect who has promised to make the Pentagon less “woke.”

The chair’s four-year term normally is staggered so they serve the end of one administration and the beginning of another.

For Brown, that two-year mark arrives in September 2025, well into Trump’s first year back in office. There is no rule, however, prohibiting Trump from dismissing him sooner. Any such move would be extraordinary, though not unprecedented.

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