U.S. President Donald Trump speaks next to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 10, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump is forcing “religious nuttery” on the rest of the United States through the military, according to an ex-adviser to a different Republican president.
“I want this religious extremism, I want this religious nuttery, I want this religious nationalism, I want this evil buried under a concrete f—— sarcophagus,” Steve Schmidt, a podcaster who was once a top adviser to President George W. Bush, said on Sunday. “Do not disappoint the president. Tell me how you do that. How do we get this out?”
Ken Harbaugh, a former United States Navy pilot and Democratic congressional candidate, told Schmidt that Hegseth’s attitude demoralizes more than a quarter of US troops.
“I think one of the things that Hegseth clearly does not understand is how demoralizing his Christian nationalism is — how the military, while they used to laugh at him, are now appalled when he gives these speeches about ‘the lamentations of our enemies’ and ‘God will not hear their prayers,’” Harbaugh told Schmidt. “I don't know how someone has not briefed him that fully 30 percent of the American military identifies as non-Christian. And of the remaining 70 percent, I don't think most of them are hearing speeches about ‘Bashing your enemies’ heads against the wall’ and thinking, ‘Let's go kill some bad guys.’ They see the problem in that.”
After adding that even most military chaplains understand that Christianity should not be preached by people in charge, even as they also agree it is perfectly okay to pray in uniform.
“The job of the chaplaincy — the job of even a committed leader in the military, someone committed to their faith — is the mission first, and you have to find a way to subordinate your personal feelings to that mission,” Harbaugh told Schmidt. “And when you don't, you get what you see in Pete Hegseth, which is someone who puts his own... He's exorcising his own personal demons using the most powerful military force in the world. And I think that is especially dangerous.”
Hegseth has also been criticized by veterans for abusing his office to settle political scores.
"The very first sentence of Secretary Pete Hegseth's cover memo…. is retrospective and retributive, rather than prospective and mission-oriented," wrote retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling for The Bulwark in January regarding an explicit partisan document attributed to Hegseth. "Strategy documents…. are not vehicles for settling political scores; they are meant to speak to a professional force tasked with executing national objectives under extreme risk."
Hegesth is not the only Christian nationalist in a position of power in America’s military-industrial complex. Trump’s billionaire ally and military technology supplier, Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel, insists that he is an expert on the Antichrist and his version of Christianity is literal truth.
“Thiel’s evangelism is another example of how the right has strategically co-opted Christian religious teachings to provide support for their autocratic tendencies, as well as their fears about technology being limited through ‘woke’ beliefs,” Anthea Butler, chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, explained in a Tuesday editorial for MSNOW.