BUENOS AIRES, Argentina: The usual suspects abstained from voting on a seemingly uncontroversial United Nations resolution that denounced violence against women and girls on Thursday — Iran, Russia, North Korea.
But the country casting the sole vote against the nonbinding resolution, drafted by France and the Netherlands, took the world by surprise. It was Argentina, long considered one of Latin America’s most socially progressive countries.
Unleashing an avalanche of criticism across the political spectrum on Friday, the ‘no’ vote by Buenos Aires marked the latest in a series of dramatic foreign policy shifts under President Javier Milei, the most right-wing leader in Argentina’s 41 years of democracy.
It comes just days after Milei, an outspoken climate change skeptic, abruptly called Argentina’s negotiators home from the UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, stirring concerns that the radical economist might seek to emulate former US President Donald Trump in withdrawing Argentina entirely from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Not only has Milei transformed Argentine foreign policy in line with the United States and Israel, his government has also taken fringe positions on the global stage that fly in the face of the liberal, rules-based international order.
“It’s a big break with standard Argentine foreign policy, which has long been oriented toward making Argentina an integrated part of the Global South,” said Richard Sanders, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and former State Department official in the region. “It’s a definitely a significant change in how Argentina relates internationally.”
Argentina’s vote at the UN Thursday recalled a similar clash last month when Argentina became the only member of all the Group of 20 nations to sign onto a statement adopting language about gender equality.
“Argentina votes alone, against the rest of humanity,” the conservative party of former President Mauricio Macri, an ally of Milei’s government, wrote on social media platform X Friday.
Another centrist party, the Unión Cívica Radical, joined the chorus of local condemnation.
“By fighting imaginary cultural battles we end up isolated from the world,” said Senator Martín Lousteau, president of the centrist party.
Lousteau denounced Argentina’s UN vote opposing an end to gender violence as a “disgrace.” Top official Guillermo Francos defended the decision, saying “neither commitments nor treaties will solve the issue of gender violence.”
Nearly a year into his presidency, the former Argentine TV pundit remains erratic and idiosyncratic in the global spotlight, in striking similarity to Trump. Milei became the first foreign leader since the US election to meet Trump, albeit informally, late Thursday at the president-elect’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
In a congratulatory phone call with Trump earlier this week, Miei’s spokesperson reported that Trump told the Argentine leader: “You’re my favorite president.” Trump has not confirmed the claim.
The Argentine presidency on Friday proudly released a stream of photos from Mar-a-Lago featuring Milei in a sharp suit beaming alongside Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, with whom Milei has also publicly cultivated a bromance over their shared contempt for “wokeness,” gender issues and socialism.
In November 2023, an angry Argentine electorate fed up with sky-high inflation, debt defaults and bank runs handed the outsider a sweeping mandate to carry out an overhaul of Argentina’s crisis-stricken economy.
But along with Milei’s libertarian crusade has come a series of cultural battles — both at home, where the president eliminated Argentina’s women’s and environment ministries and scrapped the national anti-discrimination institute, as well as abroad, where Milei has sought to fashion himself as a far-right icon, raising the hackles of key allies like Brazil and Spain.
“Milei got into the presidency on the basis of his clearly stated libertarian views, it was all about the economy,” Sanders said. “But these other views are nothing he kept hidden.”
Tensions over Milei’s culture war escalated this month. When Argentina voted at the UN in favor of ending the American economic embargo against Cuba on Oct. 30, Milei fired then-Foreign Minister Diana Mondino over what he called her “unforgivable mistake” and swiftly replaced her with Gerardo Werthein, a wealthy businessman who had been Buenos Aires’ ambassador to the US.
This weekend, Milei and Werthein plan to meet Trump again at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Experts say that Milei hopes to cash in on his friendship with Trump to help crisis-stricken Argentina secure a much-needed infusion cash infusion from the International Monetary Fund, to which Argentina owes over $44 billion. The US is the fund’s largest shareholder.
In recent weeks, Milei’s shock dismissal of Argentina’s top diplomat — a polished political performer who frequently worked to mend diplomatic relations strained by Milei’s profanity-laden fights with traditional allies — has sent shivers through Argentina’s diplomatic ranks.
Milei has vowed to purge his foreign ministry of so-called “traitors to the country” who have strayed from his stance, which includes rejecting the “Pact for the Future” adopted by the UN in September that promotes climate action, female empowerment and the regulation of artificial intelligence.
Local media has reported the forced resignations of at least seven diplomats in recent weeks who were perceived as critical of the president’s Trump-like attacks on the collective philosophy of the UN Milei accuses such multilateral forums of restricting members’ freedom.
Argentina’s left-leaning Peronist movement — which has dominated the country’s politics for decades — was seething Friday, with lawmakers aghast at what they saw as the unraveling of hard-won social gains like Argentina’s breakthrough legalization of abortion in 2020 and recent efforts to curb fossil fuels.
“For you, freedom is violence,” said Mayra Mendoza, a prominent Peronist politician on Friday, addressing Milei.
The libertarian has called abortion “murder,” climate change a “socialist lie” and the UN a “leviathan with multiple tentacles.”
In Milei’s latest drastic move, Argentina is sole UN holdout voting ‘no’ to ending gender violence
https://arab.news/2wrxy
In Milei’s latest drastic move, Argentina is sole UN holdout voting ‘no’ to ending gender violence
- The ‘no’ vote marked the latest in a series of dramatic foreign policy shifts under President Javier Milei, the most right-wing leader in Argentina’s 41 years of democracy
- Nearly a year into his presidency, the former Argentine TV pundit remains erratic and idiosyncratic in the global spotlight, in striking similarity to Trump
The United Nations faces uncertainty as Trump returns to US presidency
- In his first term, Trump suspended funding for the UN health and family planning agencies, withdrew from its cultural organization and top human rights body, and flaunted the WTO’s rulebook
UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations and other international organizations are bracing for four more years of Donald Trump, who famously tweeted before becoming president the first time that the 193-member UN was “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.”
In his first term, Trump suspended funding for the UN health and family planning agencies, withdrew from its cultural organization and top human rights body, and jacked up tariffs on China and even longtime US allies by flaunting the World Trade Organization’s rulebook. The United States is the biggest single donor to the United Nations, paying 22 percent of its regular budget.
Trump’s take this time on the world body began taking shape this week with his choice of Republican Rep. Elize Stefanik of New York for US ambassador to the UN.
Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House member, called last month for a “complete reassessment” of US funding for the United Nations and urged a halt to support for its agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA. President Joe Biden paused the funding after UNRWA fired several staffers in Gaza suspected of taking part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas.
Here’s a look at what Trump 2.0 could mean for global organizations:
‘A theater’ for a conservative agenda
Speculation about Trump’s future policies has already become a parlor game among wags in Washington and beyond, and reading the signals on issues important to the UN isn’t always easy.
For example, Trump once called climate change a hoax and has supported the fossil fuel industry but has sidled up to the environmentally minded Elon Musk. His first administration funded breakneck efforts to find a COVID-19 vaccine, but he has allied with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“The funny thing is that Trump does not really have a fixed view of the UN,” said Richard Gowan, UN director for the International Crisis Group think tank.
Gowan expects that Trump won’t view the world body “as a place to transact serious political business but will instead exploit it as a theater to pursue a conservative global social agenda.”
There are clues from his first term. Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Paris climate accord and is likely to do it again after President Joe Biden rejoined.
Trump also had the US leave the cultural and educational agency UNESCO and the UN-backed Human Rights Council, claiming they were biased against Israel. Biden went back to both before recently opting not to seek a second consecutive term on the council.
Trump cut funding for the UN population agency for reproductive health services, claiming it was funding abortions. UNFPA says it doesn’t take a position on abortion rights, and the US rejoined.
He had no interest in multilateralism — countries working together to address global challenges — in his first term. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it “the cornerstone” of the United Nations.
A new ‘Cold War’ world?
The world is a different place than when Trump bellowed “America First” while taking office in 2017: Wars have broken out in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has grown, and so have fears about Iran’s rapidly advancing atomic program.
The UN Security Council — more deeply divided among its veto-wielding permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has made no progress in resolving those issues. Respect for international law in war zones and hotspots worldwide is in shreds.
“It’s really back to Cold War days,” said John Bolton, a former national security adviser at Trump’s White House.
He said Russia and China are “flying cover” for countries like Iran, which has stirred instability in the Middle East, and North Korea, which has helped Russia in its war in Ukraine. There’s little chance of deals on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or resolving conflicts involving Russia or China at the council, he said.
Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, expects Stefanik will have a “tougher time” because of the range of issues facing the Security Council.
“What had been fairly sleepy during the first Trump term is not going to be sleepy at all in the second Trump term,” he said.
The Security Council has been impotent on Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 invasion because of Russia’s veto power. And it has failed to adopt a resolution with teeth demanding a ceasefire in Gaza because of US support for Israel.
The Crisis Group’s Gowan said Republicans in Congress are “furious” about UN criticisms of Israeli policies in Gaza and he expects them to urge Trump to “impose severe budget cuts on the UN, and he will do so to satisfy his base.”
Possible impact on UN work
The day-to-day aid work of global institutions also faces uncertainty.
In Geneva, home to many UN organizations focusing on issues like human rights, migration, telecommunications and weather, some diplomats advise wait-and-see caution and say Trump generally maintained humanitarian aid funding in his first term.
Trade was a different matter. Trump bypassed World Trade Organization rules, imposing tariffs on steel and other goods from allies and rivals alike. Making good on his new threats, like imposing 60 percent tariffs on goods from China, could upend global trade.
Other ideological standoffs could await, though the international architecture has some built-in protections and momentum.
In a veiled reference to Trump’s victory at the UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, Guterres said the “clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, no government can stop it.”
Allison Chatrchyan, a climate change researcher at the AI-Climate Institute at Cornell University, said global progress in addressing climate change “has been plodding along slowly” thanks to the Paris accord and the UN convention on climate change, but Trump’s election “will certainly create a sonic wave through the system.”
“It is highly likely that President Trump will again pull the United States out of the Paris agreement,” though it could only take place after a year under the treaty’s rules, wrote Chatrchyan in an email. “United States leadership, which is sorely needed, will dissipate.”
During COVID-19, when millions of people worldwide were getting sick and dying, Trump lambasted the World Health Organization and suspended funding.
Trump’s second term won’t necessarily resemble the first, said Gian Luca Burci, a former WHO legal counsel. “It may be more extreme, but it may be also more strategic because Trump has learned the system he didn’t really know in the first term.”
If the US leaves WHO, that “opens the whole Pandora’s box, — by stripping the agency of both funding and needed technical expertise — said Burci, a visiting professor of international law at Geneva’s Graduate Institute. “The whole organization is holding its breath — for many reasons.”
But both Gowan and Bolton agree there is one UN event Trump is unlikely to miss: the annual gathering of world leaders at the General Assembly, where he has reveled in the global spotlight.
In Pennsylvania as elsewhere, Latino men rallied behind Trump
- While Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris carried the overall Hispanic vote, a majority of Latino men — 54 percent — voted for the bombastic Republican businessman, according to NBC exit polls
READING, United States: After he voted for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Kenny Ramirez said the price of equipment and supplies needed to run his barbershop in Pennsylvania went up.
Ramirez, a 35-year-old Dominican-American who lives in the majority-Hispanic city of Reading, is emblematic of a number of Latino men who moved in greater numbers toward Trump this election.
Disillusioned with the Biden administration, Ramirez told AFP he was frustrated by a lack of help for small businesses and its inability to stop the surge in undocumented immigrants at the southern border.
“I thought there was going to be change,” said Ramirez, who voted for Trump in the November 5 election. “And I didn’t see it.”
While Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris carried the overall Hispanic vote, a majority of Latino men — 54 percent — voted for the bombastic Republican businessman, according to NBC exit polls.
The trend seemed to hold true in Berks County, where Reading is located, with Trump securing a strong victory, winning nearly 6,000 more votes compared to the 2020 election.
Nationally, Trump’s win in Pennsylvania and all six other swing states, as well as in the popular vote, marked a decisive victory over Harris.
“I voted for Trump because I thought he was the best choice for the economy,” Ramirez said as he stood in his shop, cutting and trimming hair.
In Reading, where nearly 70 percent of the population is Hispanic, Joseph Nunez, 39, is the first Latino to serve as chairman of the local Republican Party.
He has logged thousands of miles in a mobile office van he calls “Hercules” to convince Hispanic voters and other groups to join the party.
Nunez said he has spent six years promoting the Republican cause locally, which helped Trump make inroads with Hispanic voters in 2024.
“I feel like an Olympic gold medalist right now,” Nunez said. “I feel like someone who just gave it their all, and finally got a win in the end.”
That win includes voters such as Bryant Morales, who said he used to be a Democrat. That is, until Trump entered national politics.
“He showed me that I’m a Republican now,” the 35-year-old, who voted for Trump in all the recent elections, told AFP while sitting in Ramirez’s barbershop.
“When you see the Democrats who are in office, they didn’t really do much,” he added.
Morales, who is Dominican-American and works as a car salesman, said he thinks Trump’s business background makes him a better steward of the economy.
“He can make the economy better as a business, because he’s going to take America as a business,” Morales said.
Kevin Boughter, chairman of the Berks County Democratic Committee, said he was at a loss for why an increasing number of Hispanic men are rallying behind Trump given the candidate’s history of disparaging comments about Latino communities and immigrants.
“It baffles me,” Boughter said in his office, looking over election figures. “I don’t understand it.”
Boughter said he came to worry that the Harris campaign wasn’t paying enough attention to this part of Pennsylvania as Election Day neared.
Harris did eventually come to Reading — on the very last day of the presidential race. She visited a Puerto Rican restaurant and knocked on a few voters’ doors in between campaign stops.
“I wish it would have been more,” Boughter said.
As Trump prepares to take office and assembles his cabinet, Morales, the car salesman, remains optimistic.
“We gambled on Trump, we voted for Trump,” he said. “Now we’ve got to let him do his work and we’re going to see what happens.”
Dutch ruling coalition narrowly survives fallout of Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv football violence
- Coalition faced threat of collapse as Deputy Finance Minister Nora Achahbar resigned on Friday from the cabinet, prompting fears that other members of NSC party would follow suit
- Achahbar, who is of Moroccan descent, claimed racist statements were made as the Cabinet discussed political fallout of last week’s Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv football violence
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The Dutch government dominated by hard-right leader Geert Wilders survived a government crisis that centered on the resignation of the finance state secretary over what she saw as denigrating comments on immigrants after Israeli fans were assaulted following a soccer game in Amsterdam.
Wilders last Wednesday blamed Moroccans for attacks on Israeli soccer fans, claiming that “we saw Muslims hunting Jews” and added it was fueled by ”Moroccans who want to destroy Jews.” He said those convicted of involvement should be deported if they have dual nationality.
Morocco-born Nora Achahbar of centrist New Social Contract party announced her resignation as finance secretary late Friday after a heated cabinet meeting discussing last week’s violence on the streets of Amsterdam after a football match between local club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
She said that “the polarizing manners have had such an impact on me that I could, or would, no longer fulfill my role as state secretary.”
“Polarization in society is dangerous because it undermines the bond between people. Because of that, we start seeing each other as opponent instead of fellow citizens,” Achahbar said in her resignation letter to parliament on Friday.
Achahbar departure prompted speculation that other members of NSC party — a junior partner in the four-party Dutch coalition government — would follow suit.
But late Friday, Schoof told journalists at a press conference that party leaders decided to continue to work together, averting the potential fall of his not yet five-month-old government.
“Nora Achahbar has decided not to continue as Deputy Minister,” the premier said.
“But as the cabinet we decided to continue together,” Schoof said after a five-hour emergency meeting with his coalition partners at his official residence in The Hague.
The Dutch government officially announced Achahbar’s resignation in a statement late Friday.
“The King, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, granted this resignation in the most honorable manner,” the government statement said.
On Monday, during the cabinet meeting to discuss the attacks, “things reportedly got heated, and in Achahbar’s opinion racist statements were made,” the NOS public broadcaster said.
“Achahbar reportedly indicated then that she, as a minister, had objections to certain language used by her colleagues,” NOS added.
Coalition party leaders gathered in The Hague for an emergency session on Friday evening to discuss the current crisis, with NSC acting leader Nicolien van Vroonhoven saying beforehand “we will see” if her party wanted to continue in the government coalition.
Far-right leader Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party won the most seats in Dutch elections a year ago, but the coalition it formed would lose its majority if the NSC pulled out of the government.
The ruling coalition led by Schoof has 88 seats in parliament between the NSC, the Freedom Party (PVV), the Liberal VVD and farmer-friendly BBB party.
The political turbulence was set in motion after Maccabi fans were chased and beaten on November 7 in attacks that Schoof said were prompted by “unadulterated anti-Semitism.”
Far-right leader Wilders said during a debate on Wednesday that the perpetrators of the violence were “all Muslims” and “for the most part Moroccans.”
He called for the attackers to be prosecuted “for terrorism.”
Dutch authorities however also reported that Maccabi fans set fire to a Palestinian flag before the match, chanted anti-Arab slurs and vandalized a taxi.
Police launched a massive probe into the incident which Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel said was “racing ahead,” although much still remained unclear about the night’s events.
The violence struck amid heightened tensions and polarization in Europe following a rise in anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and Islamophobic attacks since the start of the war in Gaza.
But the Dutch government late Thursday said it needed “more time” to flesh out a strategy to fight anti-Semitism.
Argentina orders 61 Brazilians arrested over 2023 Brasilia coup attempt
- Brazil’s Supreme Court has requested Argentina to round up the Brazilian nationals in Argentina, who are subject to an extradition request and have been sentenced to prison term
BUENOS AIRES: Argentina’s justice system has ordered the arrest of 61 Brazilians in the country who are facing prison sentences at home related to last year’s coup attempt in Brasilia, a judicial source told AFP on Friday.
The order, issued by Judge Daniel Rafecas, was requested by Brazil’s Supreme Court to round up the Brazilian nationals in Argentina, who are subject to an extradition request and have been sentenced to prison terms, the source said.
Brazilian police have arrested hundreds of suspects in the January 2023 attack by thousands of supporters of former far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro on the country’s presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court.
Claiming electoral fraud, they demanded the intervention of the armed forces to depose newly elected left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Brazil announced on June 10 that it had requested Argentina’s help in locating more than 140 fugitives linked to the assault.
“Two people have already been arrested,” the judicial source said Friday.
“Wherever they are identified or located in Argentina, they will be arrested and turned over to judicial authorities to begin the extradition process.”
In October, Argentina amended its refugee law so that people accused or convicted of crimes in their native countries would no longer be eligible.
Trump’s pick for defense chief had been flagged by fellow service member as possible ‘Insider Threat’
- Pete Hegseth was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo associated with white supremacist groups
- He’s also shown support for members of the military accused of war crimes and criticized the military’s justice system
WASHINGTON: Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo on his bicep that’s associated with white supremacist groups.
Hegseth, who has downplayed the role of military members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and railed against the Pentagon’s subsequent efforts to address extremism in the ranks, has said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest.
This week, however, a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time, shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to the unit’s leadership flagging a different tattoo reading “Deus Vult” that’s been used by white supremacists, concerned it was an indication of an “Insider Threat.”
If Hegseth assumes office, it would mean that someone who has said it’s a sham that extremism is a problem in the military would oversee a sprawling department whose leadership reacted with alarm when people in tactical gear stormed up the US Capitol steps on Jan. 6 in military-style stack formation. He’s also shown support for members of the military accused of war crimes and criticized the military’s justice system.
Hegseth and the Trump transition team did not respond to emails seeking comment.
As the AP reported in an investigation published last month, more than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to data collected and analyzed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Though those numbers reflect a small fraction of those who have served honorably in the military — and Lloyd Austin, the current defense secretary, has said that extremism is not widespread in the US military — AP’s investigation found that plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties.
‘People who love our country’
Since Jan. 6, Hegseth, like many Trump supporters, has minimized both the riot’s seriousness and the role of people with military training. Amid the widespread condemnation the day after the assault, Hegseth took a different approach. On a panel on Fox News, Hegseth portrayed the crowd as patriots, saying they “love freedom” and were “people who love our country” who had “been re-awoken to the reality of what the left has done” to their country.
Of the 14 people convicted in the Capitol attack of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge resulting from Jan. 6, eight previously served in the military. While the majority of those with military backgrounds arrested after Jan. 6 were no longer serving, more than 20 were in the military at the time of the attack, according to START.
Hegseth wrote in his book “The War on Warriors,” published earlier this year, that just “a few” or “a handful” of active-duty soldiers and reservists had been at the Capitol that day. He did not address the hundreds of military veterans who were arrested and charged.
Hegseth has argued the Pentagon overreacted by taking steps to address extremism, and has taken leadership to task for the military’s efforts to remove people it deemed white supremacists and violent extremists from the ranks. Hegseth has written that the problem is “fake” and “manufactured” and characterized it as “peddling the lie of racism in the military.” He said efforts to root extremism out had pushed “rank-and-file patriots out of their formations.”
“America is less safe, and our generals simply do not care about the oath that they swore to uphold. The generals are too busy assessing how domestic ‘extremists’ wearing Carhartt jackets will usurp our ‘democracy’ with gate barriers or flagpoles,” he wrote in “The War on Warriors.”
In a segment on Fox News last year about Jacob Chansley, a Navy veteran known as the “QAnon Shaman” who walked through the Capitol while wearing a horned fur hat, Hegseth played a misleading video clip from his then-colleague Tucker Carlson that sought to portray Chansley as a passive sightseer.
In fact, Chansley was among the first rioters to enter the building and pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding in 2021. Chansley acknowledged using a bullhorn to rile up the mob, offering thanks in a prayer while in the Senate chamber for having the chance to get rid of traitors and writing a threatening note to Vice President Mike Pence saying, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”
In a message on Facebook Hegseth posted with an excerpt of the video, he wrote the way Chansley had been treated by the justice system “is disgusting.”
“Trump, Chansley, and many more... the Left wants us all locked up,” Hegseth wrote.
Support for convicted war criminals
Hegseth served for almost 20 years and deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. He has two Bronze Stars. In speaking about his service and advocating for other service members and veterans, he has taken actions to support convicted war criminals and recently said he had told his platoon they could ignore directives limiting when they can shoot.
In a podcast interview released earlier this month, Hegseth described getting a briefing from a military lawyer in 2005 in Baghdad on the rules of engagement. Hegseth said the lawyer told them they could not shoot someone carrying a rocket-propelled grenade unless it was pointed at them.
“I remember walking out of that briefing, pulling my platoon together and being like, ‘Guys we’re not doing that. You know, like if you see an enemy and they, you know, engage before he’s able to point his weapon at you and shoot, we’re going to have your back,’” Hegseth said.
“All they do is take one incident and yell ‘war criminal,’” he said, referring to The New York Times, the left and Democrats, adding, “Why wouldn’t we back these guys up even if they weren’t perfect?”
He said he was proud of his role in securing pardons from Trump in 2019 for a former US Army commando set to stand trial in the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker, as well as a former Army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire upon three Afghans, killing two. At Hegseth’s urging, Trump also ordered a promotion for Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL convicted of posing with a dead Islamic State captive in Iraq.
Biden’s inauguration
Hegseth has complained that he himself was labeled an extremist by the D.C. National Guard and said he was prevented from serving during Biden’s inauguration, a few weeks after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, because of a cross tattoo on his chest. He said he decided to end his military service shortly after that in disgust.
But a fellow Guard member who was working as a security officer ahead of the inauguration gave AP an email he sent that showed him raising concerns about a different tattoo.
Retired Master Sgt. DeRicko Gaither, who was serving as the D.C. Army National Guard’s physical security manager and on its anti-terrorism force protection team in January 2021, told the AP that he received an email from a former D.C. Guard member that included a screenshot of a social media post that included two photos showing several of Hegseth’s tattoos.
Gaither told AP he researched the tattoos — including one of a Jerusalem Cross and the context of the words “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” on his bicep — and determined they had sufficient connection to extremist groups to elevate the email to his commanding officers.
Several of Hegseth’s tattoos are associated with an expression of religious faith, according to Heidi Beirich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, but they have also been adopted by some far right groups and violent extremists. Their meaning depends on context, she said.
Some extremists invoke their association with the Christian crusades to express anti-Muslim sentiment. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism notes that in 2023 the words were in the notebooks of the Allen, Texas, shooter Mauricio Garcia. Anders Breivik, a right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011, had similar markings in his manifesto.
In an email Gaither sent on Jan. 14, 2021, which he provided to the AP, he raised concerns about Hegseth, a major at the time, and mentioned only the “Deus Vult” tattoo. In the email addressed to then-Maj. Gen. William Walker, who was commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, Gauther raised concern that the phrase was associated with white supremacists who invoke the idea of a white Christian medieval past as well as the Christian crusades.
“MG Walker, Sir, with the information provided this falls along the line of Insider Threat and this is what we as members of the US Army, District of Columbia National Guard and the Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection Team strive to prevent,” Gaither wrote.
“I said, ‘you guys need to take a look at this,’” Gaither said in a phone interview with the AP on Thursday. “I later received an email that he was told to stay away.”
Biden’s inauguration took place just two weeks after the insurrection, and the Army was taking no chances. More than 25,000 Guard members were pouring into the city and each was going through additional vetting, depending on how close they were going to be to Biden.
A total of 12 National Guard members were told to stay home, former Pentagon press secretary Jonathan Hoffman told reporters in a briefing a day before the inauguration. At least two were flagged due to potential extremism concerns; the rest were due to other background check issues that were identified as concerning by either the Army, FBI or Secret Service. It was not clear whether Hegseth was among the 12 Hoffman referenced at the time.
Hegseth has also speculated in podcast interviews that he was asked to stand down because of his political views, his role as a journalist covering Jan. 6 or because he works for Fox News.
