From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro.

This is the Daily.

Now that Matt Gates has withdrawn from consideration as Attorney General, Donald Trump's most controversial cabinet pick is his selection of Pete Hegsef as Secretary of Defense.

Today, my colleague, Dave Phillips, on the three major deployments that shaped how Hexeth views the military,

and why, if confirmed, he's so dead set on disrupting its leadership?

It's Tuesday, November 26th.

Dave, welcome back. It's been a long time for me since we've last spoken, and it's nice to see your face.

Oh, you too. So, Dave, when it comes to the subject of what we're going to be talking about today, Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Heggseth, what's probably best known about him at this point is that he faces a very serious

accusation of sexual assault, which we will return to within this conversation. Right. And on top

of that, that he lacks the traditional background for becoming Secretary of Defense. His

latest job was as a Fox News host. But what's less well understood

is what exactly he thinks about the United States military, which he may soon command,

based on his own experience as a member of the armed forces. And you have been trying to figure that out. Yeah. I mean, that's the big

question for me. If he gets the job, what does he want to do and why? And the reason I ask is

he does not have a lot of traditional Washington experience. He spent almost 20 years in uniform,

and he deployed three times. He's been to

Iraq. He's been to Afghanistan. But most of his experience is just leaving small groups of

troops on the ground. He's never worked in the Pentagon. He doesn't have a lot of time at big

defense contractors. So he doesn't have some of the traditional experience that's normally the road to

this type of job. And that's important because if he is confirmed, he's going to have to manage

nearly three million employees and an annual budget of almost a trillion dollars.

Well, tell us about those deployments. And I guess going back even further, how and why

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