President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, the former president announced Tuesday night.

Hegseth, 44, is an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a BA from Princeton and an MA from Harvard.

“I am honored to announce that I have nominated Pete Hegseth to serve in my cabinet as Secretary of Defense,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday night. “Pete spent his entire life as a warrior for the troops and for the country. Pete is tough, smart, and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – our Army will be great again. , and America will not back down.”

Hegseth joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014 and became co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekends”.

He is the author of the recent New York Times bestseller The War on the Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, in which he denounces what he calls “our warped, woke, caustic policies. the current army”.

He previously headed Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.

In 2012, Hegseth he ran for the Senate as a Republican in his home state of Minnesota, but withdrew from the race following the state convention. Kurt Bills, a state representative, won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election to Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Hegseth has “excellent experience as a junior officer, but he doesn’t have the senior national security experience that secretaries need,” Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Associated Press, adding that the lack of experience. might make it more difficult for Hegseth to pass Senate confirmation.

Asked about the pick Tuesday night, Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst told CBS News that Hegseth “will be a very strong secretary.”

But initial reactions from other GOP senators were mixed.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama was asked what he thought and replied, “I’d have to think about it.”

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the choice “interesting,” while Sen. Todd Young of Indiana said he didn’t have “a sense of his background.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska learned of the selection from a reporter and responded, “Wow.” Asked if it was a good choice, she said: “I’m surprised. I won’t comment on whether it’s good, bad or indifferent. I’m just surprised because the names I’ve heard for the secretary of defense. I didn’t include it.”

As for whether that would be difficult to confirm, Mukowski said, “I don’t know.”

contributed to this report.