WCPT 820 Interview: Tom Nichols

Joan Esposito (Featured Interviews)

Joan is joined by Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and an author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. Nichols talked about his open letter to new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom Nichols thinks "might be the most unqualified major cabinet nominee in modern American history."

"I said, look, I know how you got this job, but you're going to have to lead the military now, and you're going to have to leave a lot of that crazy rhetoric behind, even though that's why you were hired and why you got the job," Nichols told WCPT. "And I just thought it was important to say, look, this is something different now; this isn't a talk show; this isn't a game; this isn't reality TV. 'You are now the secretary of Defense, perhaps the most important job after president of the United States. You will be the last person the president talks to, most likely, before deciding to go to war or to use nuclear weapons.' I was hoping to just put that out there to impress the gravity of this on people that just don't seem to understand it, including Hegseth himself."

Nichols, who was a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College for more than a decade, also discussed the potential for a military purge, the revocation of Gen. Mark Milley's security detail and clearance, and the concept of "malicious compliance" in federal agencies.

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