Pete Hegseth Is Unrecognizable In Throwback Pic From His Military Days
Before he became a Fox News host and was later selected as President-elect Donald Trump's secretary of defense appointee to his ego-driven cabinet, Pete Hegseth was serving his country in a different fashion via his time in the Army National Guard. However, without the knowledge of who posted pictures from his war days, you may not even be able to tell if it's him.
On August 8, 2024, Hegseth posted a cropped picture on Facebook of him posing with a weapon while he was deployed in Baghdad, Iraq. A full version of the photo, which he posted on Facebook on December 4, 2024, contains a timestamp revealing it was taken all the way back in December 2005, when Hegseth would have been only 25 years old. Along with thanking him for his service, some Facebook commenters noticed the smooth, baby-faced complexion he had back in the day. "You were just a baby!" one user wrote to Hegseth. In addition to his more youthful appearance in 2005, it could also be argued Hegseth's jawline appeared slightly less chiseled and defined in his throwback pictures, compared to how he looks in present-day photos.
Hegseth has boosted his image with his military background
Prior to his appointment to President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet, Pete Hegseth served in the Army National Guard for almost 20 years. During his time in the military, he was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and earned two Bronze Stars for his service. When he retired, Hegseth had reached the rank of major. Though he's moved on to new endeavors, Hegseth is still focused on strengthening the military with his political influence, albeit with questionable morals in mind surrounding its diversity policies.
Though military service of any kind is a respectable sacrifice for all those who do it, Hegseth has also used his military career to boost his own public image as a political figure. Such appears to be the case with the December 2024 post, for example, which was directed toward his liberal detractors. "I'm doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers," he wrote. "The Left is afraid of disruptors and change agents. They are afraid of @realdonaldtrump—and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don't want truth. Our warriors never back down, & neither will I." During the 2024 presidential election, he seemed to flaunt his military service in multiple posts as a way to throw shade at former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, who also served in the National Guard, but retired before his unit deployed to Iraq. "Not @timwalz in Iraq," he wrote in the August 2024 post.