'Qualified to ruin it': Analyst fears Pentagon chief nominee will destroy U.S. defense

Political analyst John Heilemann confessed Friday afternoon that he's concerned about Pete Hegseth's appointment to run the Department of Defense.

Speaking to MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Friday, Heilemann pointed out that the department is one of the largest federal agencies, with 2.8 million employees worldwide and the largest workforce in the United States.

Hegseth served in the U.S. Army and reached the rank of major, but has spent the past several years as a Fox News weekend host and Donald Trump champion. He's never led his own company, much less a government agency with a budget of over $864 billion, said Heilemann.

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"The managerial task is enormous. If you ask the question and you want to talk about Pete Hegseth in terms of, 'Is he qualified to run the defense department?' Well, the answer is, obviously, 'No,'" said Heilemann. "I mean, for generations, it's [been] seen as the hardest cabinet position. It is, you know, a monstrous city in many ways."

He pointed out that the stress and importance of the job is so "enormous" that it "kills people, causes people to have nervous breakdowns."

"He is not qualified to run it. He is qualified to ruin it," quipped Heilemann. "And that is, to go back to the first topic, the deconstruction of the administrative state."

He explained that he meant Trump isn't interested in running the agencies well with the appointees. He wants them to "wreck those institutions."

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