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By Miranda Devine (originally from The New York Post)

The elitist attacks on Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, show exactly why Democrats lost the election in a landslide.

Intelligent, articulate, patriotic, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, a combat veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with two Bronze Stars, Hegseth, 44, is an inspired choice to lead the Pentagon and rid it of the woke poison that has sent recruitment levels down the toilet.

Not only that, but he has a tattoo of “We the People” on his arm, a visible sign of his America First commitment to the Constitution, whose first words remind us that America at its founding rejected rule by elites.

And yet, because Hegseth most recently has been a popular Fox News host, the liberal intelligentsia are accusing him of being stupid and unqualified.

He’s a lot better qualified to run the Defense Department than Kamala Harris ever was to be commander-in-chief.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Of course, after Trump announced Wednesday that firebrand MAGA bro Rep. Matt Gaetz was his attorney general pick, the left completely lost its mind.

But they asked for it.

With Gaetz, an articulate and fearless pit-bull congressman from Florida, Trump is signaling that it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy in his second term, when it comes to the corrupt Department of Justice that conducted lawfare against him and his allies, ran cover for the Biden family’s corruption, sicced the FBI on parents at school board meetings and Christians praying outside abortion clinics, and treated non-violent Jan. 6 protesters like domestic terrorists.

Beltway insider journalist Mark Halperin summed up the reaction: “Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz for attorney general has hit official Washington like a bomb.”

A rattled Andrew Weissmann, the Russiagate plotter and former DOJ prosecutor, blathered incoherently on MSNBC that Gaetz is “not just unqualified but … untethered to the facts and maybe also the law … He is Exhibit A of weaponization [and], we are in pure George Orwell ‘1984’ land.”

If the DOJ had behaved properly and prudently, according to the law, instead of playing smash-mouth politics against conservatives the last four years, they might deserve some respect.

As it is, they get their worst nightmare, because only radical surgery will fix that rotten culture.

“Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday.

“He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

Quelle horreur!

The rash of likely DOJ resignations to come will provide a valuable initial filtering out of what Trump has called “the enemy within.”

Gaetz is Trump’s pre-emptive declaration of war against the Deep State that crippled his first presidency.

Hegseth is a less nihilistic, if equally pugnacious, choice for the Pentagon.

He is the perfect patriot to restore the morale of a dispirited military that has seen humiliation heaped on top of indignity in the Biden-Harris era — from the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan to the collapse of the Gaza pier, not to mention the exhibitionistic sexual fetishism that seems to have infected elements of the armed services.

“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Inspecting the troops

Hegseth will eradicate from our armed services the destructive ideology of “critical race theory” which Gen. Mark “Thoroughly Modern” Milley — former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, protégé of Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden pet and de facto former leader of the military wing of The Resistance against Trump — once defended in congressional testimony.

“I want to understand white rage,” Milley told the House Armed Services Committee in June 2021.

No more of that nonsense with Hegseth at the helm.

“No, we should only be focused on readiness and meritocracy and lethality,” he said on Fox News last year.

He has openly described his ideas for how to reform the military on air, in speeches and in his books such as “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”

“Our ‘elites’ are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’ John McClane in ‘Die Hard,’ ” he wrote.

“But there will come a day when they realize they need John McClane — that in fact their ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful and deadly.”

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” he told podcast host Shawn Ryan.

“Any general … admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI/woke s–t has got to go.”

“Either you’re in for war fighting, and that’s the only litmus test we care about. You gotta get DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and CRT [critical race theory] out of military academies. You’re not training young officers to be baptized in this kind of thinking.”

Hegseth’s critics who sneer that he is unqualified because he is a Fox News host are the same people who insisted that Joe Biden was compos mentis, Harris was competent and her running mate, Tim “Stolen Valor” Walz, who shirked combat and then lied about it, was some sort of military hero.

Read the full op-ed over at The New York Post: