The Trump Administration Chooses Violence

President-elect Donald Trump, Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance, and Daniel Penny, a former U.S. Marine who was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 choke-hold death of a man on a New York City subway train, attend the Army-Navy football game in Landover, Maryland, on December 14, 2024. Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Pete Hegseth’s tarnished past may not prevent him from becoming the next secretary of Defense. His rise depends on Republicans in the Senate, and they’re eager to follow Donald Trump’s lead — even if that means empowering a man like Hegseth. Before the New York Times broke the news that Hegseth, a longtime Fox News presenter and Army National Guard veteran, had been accused of rape, he was known for defending alleged war criminals, including Eddie Gallagher, a former Navy SEAL. On Monday, the Times revealed that Hegseth’s security guard, former Army Special Forces master sergeant John Jacob Hasenbein, reportedly beat a civilian role player in a simulated hostage rescue, leaving the Iraqi American man with injuries that included “a broken nose, a broken tooth, a sprained shoulder, a scalp hematoma, and blunt facial trauma.” According to the Times, a military jury found Hasenbein guilty of aggravated assault at a 2020 court-martial, but the judge later declared a mistrial because one of Hasenbein’s friends had repeatedly spoken to a juror.

There’s a chance that Hegseth didn’t know about Hasenbein’s history, but as the Times notes, “some details of the case have been online for years.” At minimum, Hegseth was sloppy. At worst, he hired the veteran knowing his violent history, and that fits an existing pattern for Hegseth and the administration he wants to join. If confirmed, he’ll join an administration  marked by its embrace of violent deeds targeting minorities and liberals. Trump, lest we forget, was found liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, itself an act of violence.

Not long before the Times publicized Hasenbein’s past and his connection to Hegseth, J.D. Vance invited Daniel Penny to join him at the annual Army-Navy football game. Though a jury acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide in the choke-hold killing of Jordan Neely, the right agrees that Penny was violent, but insists that Neely deserved to die. “Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance posted on X. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.” Neely was unarmed when Penny choked him inside a subway car, and that was enough to make Penny a hero to the right. Vance isn’t the only Republican who’s praised the former marine for killing Neely. “I don’t know about you all, but I think we need a lot more Daniel Pennys in this country,” said Representative-elect Brandon Gill of Texas during the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala this month. “Because we have far too many Jordan Neelys.”

Gill knows where Trump and Vance are taking the party and the broader conservative movement and is all too happy to fall in line. With Trump as the leader of the GOP, the party has links to other killers like Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester only for Governor Greg Abbott of Texas to pardon him for the crime. Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three men and killed two during a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin and was later acquitted of murder, is now the outreach director for the Texas Gun Rights group. And Trump has said he wants to pardon the violent January 6 rioters as soon as he assumes office next week. “I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system,” Trump recently told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. “They say to a guy, ‘You’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years, they’ve been destroyed. But the system is a very nasty system.”

The idea that the system is rigged or broken — and that violence might be a meaningful solution — doesn’t always fall neatly on ideological lines, such as the embrace of the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s accused killer. But the right has taken concerted steps to align itself with violent white men, and Trump grants it an official-seeming imprimatur because he is the president-elect. His admiration for dictators and strongmen is well-known and, while there are restrictions on his own power as president, his pledge to pardon the January 6 rioters signals a certain comfort with violence as long as it’s committed against the right people. Violence is similarly inherent to another Trump pledge to conduct mass deportations. The Times reported last week that far-right militias have already begun volunteering their services to Trump, and Tom Homan, who has been nominated to run Trump’s deportation regime, “seemed open to the idea of using nontraditional personnel to carry out the plan.” Homan told Fox News last month that “thousands of retired Border Patrol agents, retired military … want to come in and volunteer to help this president secure the border and do this deportation operation.” The state-level abortion restrictions that Trump champions are at least as violent; some have cost women their lives.

Violence is fine with Trump and with Vance and Hegseth, for that matter, as long as it supports their authoritarian goals. Their foes aren’t just liberals but minorities, including women and Black Americans like Neely, who rank last in the social order they want to enshrine. The right has no intention of lifting the boot from anyone’s neck. Instead, it’ll press harder and harder until the inevitable takes place. With Trump in power, the next era in American life not only looks grim but dangerous.