The Tattoo Tarring of Pete Hegseth

A media-created narrative to tank Trump's SecDef nominee

Background: Last week, amid a slew of unconventional picks (for my perspective on that, catch this conversation with Mark Halperin on 2WAY), former and future President Donald Trump announced that Pete Hegseth as his nominee to lead the Department of Defense. The former Army infantry officer, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and earned two Bronze Stars, is currently a Fox News host and veterans advocate. 

The Facts: The criticism of Hegseth started immediately. I haven’t made sense of the veracity of all of it, although I do think concerns about “credentials” for these types of roles are just cover for political gripes. 

But one genre of criticism stood out: allegations that Hegseth represents an “insider threat” according to a former member of the National Guard he served with, based on a tattoo on his arm with the Latin words “Deus Vult,” which means “God wills it” in Latin, as well as a Jerusalem cross on his chest. A complaint filed against Hegseth alleged these tattoos symbolized ties to or support for white nationalism—a dubious claim for anyone who has spent any time at a Tridentine mass (if you’re in DC and looking for a good one, the Franciscan Monastery celebrates one at 9 AM on Sundays—get there early for a seat).  

The Spin: But instead of treating this facially ridiculous allegation with a rigorous investigation of the facts, or at least a smidge of respect and deference to people of a culture increasingly unfamiliar to mainstream reporters, outlets have used it to tar Hegseth.

What really started it was a piece in the Associated Press, “Trump Pentagon pick had been flagged by fellow service member as possible ‘Insider Threat,’” that claimed, well, just what the headline did, relying on those two tattoos as “evidence.” It isn’t until the third paragraph that we get details about what these supposedly evidentiary tattoos are. Could it be a swastika? Or another vile, well-known sign? Such a revelation would surely sink a candidacy—with good reason.

But no. The tattoos, much hyped in the headline, were the two religious-themed ones.

Perhaps the real takeaway here should be concern that the U.S. military makes decisions about where to send soldiers relying on internet sleuthing and tortured connections?

Their dubious coverage was quickly picked up by countless outlets repeating this same spurious claim, including ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Fortune, PBS, Courthouse News, the Star-Tribune, and the Boston Globe.

One of the many problems when the AP gets a story wrong is that it is retransmitted across the pages of countless other outlets who rely on the AP for stories. Although you would think these other outlets would do their due diligence to vet the pieces. Perhaps they “did.”

One thing that really struck me about the reporting, by AP and numerous others, was that the pieces’ title, subtitle, and the lede to the story were usually dedicated to hyping the dubious claim, burying the thinness of the evidence for that claim after the lede. These weren’t the types of tattoos a normal person would see as problematic. It was a cross and words in Latin. That was what this allegation relied on. If they think that’s so problematic, why not include it in the story’s headline?

For CBS News, it took five paragraphs, after the damning headline.

For Politico, it took four paragraphs to get to the tattoo mentioned in the report (although, to what I suppose can be called ‘credit,’ they did mention the other tattoo in the subhead.

USA Today, in their “this week in extremism” feature (no, I’m not kidding), included Hegseth’s chest tattoo of a cross. Such a description seems to reveal more about the newspaper—and perhaps, by extension, the media—than it does about the nominee.

The Washington Post waited three paragraphs after their headline, and didn’t get to the specifics until after mentioning the “high national anxiety” of January 6th. 

Newsweek ran multiple pieces on this!

Even a few British pubs jumped on this, including the Guardian, the Independent (my goodness—have some shame!), and the Daily Mail.

And I can’t not include the New York Times, but I’ll pass the mic to Jerry Dunleavy, who does an excellent job of breaking down how brain broken the editorial board was on this one. 

 

And of course, the least objective and evidentiary voices on Twitter picked it up and ran with it too, including MSNBC guests Sherrilyn Ifill of Howard University and Maya Wiley (h/t Collin Rugg and Chuck Ross for these finds); former Pence-staffer-turned anti-Republican-talking-head Olivia Troye; John Harwood and Keith Boykin of CNN; and Mehdi Hasan (of course).

The Takeaway: What it all amounted to was an online firestorm based on the thinnest of claims, with the media transmogrifying a facially ridiculous claim into a ready-made nomination-hearing narrative against a Trump nominee. And it tied in the media’s word of the day—”extremist”—to scare their readers and listeners into engaging.

It’s hard to imagine that wasn’t the intention. 

Simply put, the media is doing it again. Every dubious, thinly sourced claim against Trump is, and will become, headline news. This was a huge feature of Trump’s first team, as I’ve written about plenty here and elsewhere. One you may have forgotten were the “Russian bounties” allegations I revisited a couple months ago (link here). 

It’s quick and easy to spin up these types of media sagas; scant evidence, tied with the conviction that surely what Trump is doing isn’t above board. They’re often gone in an instant. But their aim is clear: use the power of the press to demean Trump and those connected to him, from every angle, on any subject that could outrage a voter enough to click on the link. 

It’s shameful, politically driven behavior, undeserving of the word “journalism.” And he hasn’t even been inaugurated yet.