Pete Hegseth appeared on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, not in his past role as co-host, but as newly appointed Secretary of Defense serving President Donald Trump.
Hegseth appeared on the show he worked on for years for an interview on the deadly air crash in Washington DC, Wednesday evening — and Trump’s immediate commentary blaming DEI for the disaster, which he followed by admitting he did not yet know the reason for the catastrophe believed to have killed 67 people.
Trump and his cabinet members addressed the White House press corps during a televised press conference with alacrity on Thursday, though that urgent response has been overshadowed by Trump injecting partisan politics into a terrible disaster, sparking a wave of criticism.
On Fox & Friends, the hosts waded directly into the controversy during their interview with Hegseth.
“Let’s talk about DEI,” Ainsley Earhardt said to kick things off. “What was happening in the control tower? We talked to Congressman Troy Nehls, and he said that at this airport, which is the busiest runway in our country, they needed 30 personnel inside the control tower. There were currently 19 when this crashed. And then there’s a lawsuit that alleged that the FAA turned away nearly a thousand air traffic controller applicants solely based on race last year. And then there is a report that the FAA launched a national outreach program for DTI, which included a push to hire workers with severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems.”
“When you’re a mom and you’re a dad and you’re putting your kids on the plane or you’re flying as a family, that’s unacceptable,” she added. “We don’t care your race. We want to make sure whoever’s in there that it’s fully manned. And we want to make sure they’re qualified.”
“Completely unacceptable, Ainsley. You’re exactly right,” Hegseth replied. “So I don’t know exactly how the staffing occurred in that particular air traffic control tower. And it sounds like there was a shortage and the investigation will tell us more about that. But the environment around which we choose, pilots or air traffic controllers, as the president pointed out correctly yesterday, better be the highest possible standard, the best of the best who are managing, you know, multiple flights. I mean, a flight a minute and managing radio traffic.”
“I think the closest analogy to military service guys is it pilots or air traffic controllers,” he continued. “I don’t care what background they come from, what their race is, what their gender is, if they’re rich or they’re poor, I just need them to be good at their job because I need my flight to land safely. The same thing applies to the Defense Department, to our military. I don’t care about your background, your gender or your skin color. I want the best.”
“And that’s why when the president says merit-based and colorblind, he’s exactly right across government. So he’s correct to point out at the FAA or in our flights, it should not be about anything other than excellence. That’s it. Excellence. I don’t care. The color of the skin of the pilot of my plane or the air traffic controller.”
“But we’ve for too long under Biden cared about those things, emphasized those things, pushed real or perceived quotas at the Defense Department were ending all of that,” he added. “It’s been made very clear across all of our services and commands. It is merit only. And that means we’ll get the best of the best. And that’s what our taxpayers and the American people expect and deserve. And in the business of warfighting, which the Defense Department is in. If you don’t have the best of the best, you lose people. And that’s why this is so important.”
It’s like Hegseth was back to hosting the show. One notable difference is that his former colleagues bestowed the honor of referring to him as “Mr. Secretary.”
Watch above via Fox News.
