Veteran reporter Bob Woodward likened President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations of relative neophytes to top national security and defense posts to him flipping off Americans.
“Why wouldn’t Trump want somebody who at least has some experience?” the author and former longtime Washington Post journalist asked Monday, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki.
“He’s trying to recreate the imperial presidency. He’s trying to say ‘I can do whatever I want, it’s up to me alone.’”
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Referring to the nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard—both former armed forces veterans—Woodward said Trump’s “goal” was choosing officials who will allow him to consolidate power.
Some observers have criticized the qualifications of Hegseth, until recently a Fox News host, and Gabbard, a newly christened Republican who served eight years in Congress as a Democrat, as inadequate for the jobs to which they’ve been nominated.
Woodward said, in his view, that’s all part of the plan.
“There are all kinds of people with various political persuasions who have enough experience to run the Pentagon but he picked someone who isn’t even near it,” he told Psaki. “You have to say ‘What is the goal?’ The goal is to give him all the say, all the power.”
Hegseth, who has never held a major public office, was booted from National Guard duty at President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration because a member of his unit flagged him as a potential “insider threat” for a tattoo he has of the motto “Deus Vult.”
The phrase, which originated during the Crusades and means “God wills it,” has been co-opted by some far-right groups.
Gabbard, meanwhile, has been accused of expressing views sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin and denying atrocities carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Putin ally whom she met on a “fact-finding” mission in 2017.
“It’s almost unconstitutional,” Woodward said, of Trump’s Cabinet picks. “Literally, it’s not, but look at it: Why do you want somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing?”
“Check engine light has just gone off and we’ve pulled in to the wrong store. It makes no sense and it is a form of giving his middle finger to the American people.”
