Trump’s Defense Secretary Pick Was Removed From Biden’s Inauguration For A Truly Wild Reason
The Fox News host who President-elect Donald Trump just announced would be his nominee for secretary of defense was not allowed to work security at President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, supposedly because of a tattoo that military higher-ups believed might have been an extremist symbol.
According to PeteHegseth, the “Fox & Friends Weekend” host and potential future defense secretary, the tattoo was a large Jerusalem cross on his chest. The Jerusalem cross originated with the Christian Crusades nearly a millennium ago. These days, it can be a simple marker of Christian beliefs ― or, in some settings, a symbol for the conquest and domination of Muslims or non-white minorities.
“I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo ― by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C.,” Hegseth said on “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast this summer. “And my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration. Jerusalem cross tattoo, it’s just a Christian symbol ... [that] is what got me disinvited.”
In 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an Army National Guard infantry officer. He served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ultimately reaching the rank of major.
But Hegseth is a surprising pick to lead the most massive military bureaucracy in human history for a few reasons, including his assertion that women should not serve in combat roles; his successfullobbying during the first Trump administration for pardons for convicted and alleged war criminals; his description of “a war on two fronts” ― one against “radical Islamist ideology” and the other against “domestic enemies,” namely, “the Left”; his opposition to the supposed “infection” of left-wing policies in the military; and his assertiona few years ago that “the Iraq War is an example of what America got right when we got it right.”
In his 2020 book “American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free,” Hegseth wrote, “Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today,” the liberal watchdog group Media Matters flagged Tuesday. In the same book, he echoed the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying that ”American leftists insist on pursuing the very same policies that led to the cultural invasion in Europe” by “Islamists.”
“Muhammad is now a top ten boys’ name in America — what will it be in 2030?” Hegseth wrote.
Regarding Biden’s inauguration, Hegseth told Ryan that while working on his latest book, he reached out to someone in his unit “who could confirm [the story] with 99.9% certainty.” He said that he was told “someone inside the DC Guard trolled your social media, found a tattoo, used it as an excuse to call you a white nationalist, an extremist, and you were specifically, by name, orders revoked to guard the inauguration because you were considered a potential threat.”
“I joined the Army because I wanted to serve my country. Extremism attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war,” Hegsethwrote in his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” adding: “And, in 2021, I was deemed an ‘extremist’ by that very same Army.”
Hegseth has pointed to the incident as an example of “political” and “partisan” decision-making. He said his tattoo is a “Christian tattoo” and not an “extremist” symbol.
“Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo,” he said separately in a Fox News interview. “It’s a Jerusalem cross. Everybody can look it up, but it was used as a premise to revoke my orders to guard the inauguration.”
Hegseth also has a tattoo that reads “Deus vult,” or “God wills it,” which he has confirmed to be a reference to the Crusades.
“I’ve got Deus Vult – God Wills It – which was the cry of the Crusaders, on my bicep,” he told the sports news website The Big Lead in 2020.
Imagery with the Jerusalem cross as well as phrases such as “Deus vult” have in recent years grown more common as stand-ins for signifiers of right-wing beliefs and sometimes far-right beliefs. For example, Donald Trump Jr. once modeled an assault riflecustomized with the Jerusalem cross and an image of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton behind bars. In 2020, a Delaware man firebombed a Planned Parenthood facility after writing “Deus vult” on the building’s exterior. In 2023, a gunman who committed a mass shooting at a Dallas-area mall had both a “Deus vult” and a swastika tattoo, as well as Nazi SS bolts and other markers of extreme beliefs.
Jim LaPorta, an investigative journalist who covers the military, confirmed some aspects of Hegseth’s inauguration story years ago. A few days after Biden’s inauguration, LaPorta and others reported in The Associated Press that 12 National Guard members had been removed from the inaugural security plan “after vetting by the FBI.” LaPorta reported, “Two other U.S. officials told The Associated Press that all 12 were found to have ties with right-wing militia groups or posted extremist views online.” The story added that the individuals were removed due to “security liabilities.”
Though two of the 12 affected service members were sent home due to “inappropriate comments or texts related to the inauguration,” according to the AP story, the other 10 were for “other potential issues that may involve previous criminal behavior or other activities, but were not directly related to the inaugural event.”
“Couple of years ago, I had a scoop which the Pentagon later confirmed that Twelve U.S. National Guard members were removed from securing then President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting,” LaPorta wrote last week on X, formerly Twitter. “Turns out one of them was @PeteHegseth”
The Pentagon said at the time it wasn’t asking follow-up questions about anyone flagged by law enforcement ― it was just removing them from the security plan that day.
“If our law enforcement partners flag an individual based on their determination that they see something, and they pass it to us, we’re not even asking what the flag was, we’re just removing them,” Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman said at the time.
Spokespeople for the Minnesota Army National Guard, with whom Hegseth deployed overseas, did not return HuffPost’s requests for comment, nor did representatives of the District of Columbia Army National Guard, which provided inauguration security. Trump’s transition team and a speakers bureau that represents Hegseth also did not return requests for comment. A Pentagon spokesperson referred HuffPost to Army public affairs, which did not respond.
It’s possible that Hegseth was the victim of overly broad vetting ahead of Biden’s inauguration. However, context is crucial.
Ever since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Crusades imagery has grown more common among the far right.
As Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor observed in 2016, “‘Deus Vult’ — or ‘God wills it’ or ‘it is the will of God’ — has become a kind of far-right code word, a hashtag proliferated around alt-right social media and graffiti scrawled in public institutions.”
NPR reported in 2017 on historians’ anger over the appropriation of Crusaders’ crosses and other medieval imagery by white nationalists. Crusader imagery was seen at the August 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
“Deus vult” has also been used alongside swastikas and other racist imagery by mosque vandals. According to KnowYourMeme.com, a website that catalogs popular usage on the Internet, “The phrase can be seen as the Christian equivalent” of Allahu akbar, or God is great.
