Vance defends tattooed Hegseth

Vice President-elect J.D. Vance came to the defense of Pete Hegseth, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Pentagon, over his tattoos. 

Mr. Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran, was nominated this week to be Mr. Trump’s defense secretary.

In the days since, Mr. Hegseth has come under scrutiny for his remarks against women serving in combat and his criticism of the Pentagon’s woke embrace and how it stands against conservatives.

Reporting from The Associated Press on Mr. Hegseth’s tattoos showed that a fellow service member flagged him as a possible “insider threat” because of one tattoo’s association with White supremacist groups. 

In response, Mr. Vance slammed the outlet for going after the Trump administration’s nominee. 

“They’re attacking Pete Hegseth for having a Christian motto tattooed on his arm,” he said on X. “This is disgusting anti-Christian bigotry from the AP, and the entire organization should be ashamed of itself.”

AP on Friday reported that the service member sent an email, which contained a screenshot of Mr. Hegseth’s tattoos, to retired Master Sgt. DeRicko Gaither, who served as the D.C. Army National Guard’s physical security manager and on its anti-terrorism force protection team. 

The shot showed a Jerusalem Cross on his chest and the words “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” on his bicep, and Mr. Gaither believed that the bicep tattoo had a strong enough connection to extremist groups to send the email to his commanding officers. 

Mr. Hegseth says he was unfairly labeled an extremist because of his chest tattoo. 

As for the bicep tattoo, Mr. Gaither wrote that the “White-Supremacist use of #DeusVult and a return to medieval Catholicism is to invoke the myth of a white Christian (i.e. Catholic) medieval past that wishes to ignore the actual demographics and theological state of Catholicism today.

“Deus Vult has enjoyed popularity with members of the alt-right because of its perceived representation of the clash of civilizations between the Christian west and the Islamic world.”