The decision by US President-elect Donald Trump to nominate a Fox News host as his secretary of defence has sent the public scrambling to learn more. Pete Hegseth’s nomination is certain to generate controversy after he previously expressed disdain for the so-called “woke” policies of Pentagon leaders, including its top military officer.

Who is Pete Hegseth?

Pete Hegseth, 44, is a co-host of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend and has been a contributor with the network since 2014. He developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show.

Hegseth was an infantry captain in the Army National Guard and served overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was the former head of Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012.

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He also championed the case of four former Blackwater contractors convicted in a 2007 Baghdad shooting rampage that killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians. They were pardoned by Trump – one of his final acts in office.

Hegseth said he left the army in 2021 after being deemed an extremist by an army that no longer wanted him. “The feeling was mutual – I didn’t want this army any more either,” Hegseth said in his book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.

What has he been appointed to lead?

Hegseth has been nominated to be the civilian leader of the US military and the boss at the Pentagon.