What Pete Hegseth’s tattoos really mean: He’s Christian and patriotic  

Washington insiders and progressives have been so disturbed by the reform platform President-elect Donald Trump means to implement once inaugurated that they have stooped to misrepresenting tattoos.  

Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense (DoD), Pete Hegseth has been openly critical of the Pentagon’s warfighting ability, saying the “woke” generals have degraded the effectiveness of the fighting force.  

“Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke [stuff], it’s got to go,” he added, using an abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, according to The Hill.  

Hegseth is also against having women in combat roles in the military.  

The “woke” generals have struck back at Hegseth through mainstream and social media, implying that some of his tattoos have sinister connotations. 

“For the record, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, proudly wears a far-right Christian Nationalist ‘Deus Vult’ tattoo on his arm,” wrote Harvard alumni Eric Alan Isaacson on X. “On his chest he wears a Crusaders’ Cross, apparently celebrating the slaughter of Muslims in holy war.”  

Snopes, the progressive fact-checking site, said some social media accounts also claim Hegseth has “Nazi” tattoos, which Snopes, actually denies.  

Snopes was good enough to catalogue all of Hegseth’s estimated 12 tattoos using social media images.  

Here’s what we know.  

The Tattoos of a Military Patriot 

Seven of the tattoos are patriotic in nature or relate to his military service.  

According to Snopes, this group includes:  

• The words “We The People” from the U.S. Constitution 

• The year 1775 in Roman numerals (MDCCLXXV) 

• A stylized American flag with its bottom stripe replaced by an AR-15 assault rifle 

• A ring of stars around his elbow (possibly a reference to the Betsy Ross flag) 

• A pair of crossed muskets (which normally represents military service) 

• Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” political cartoon from 1754 

• The patch of the 187th Infantry Regiment, of which Hegseth was a member  

Ironically, it was just four years ago that the Betsy Ross flag was declared racist. Nike even canceled a Betsy Ross shoe design because Colin Kaepernick, a former professional quarterback, not a historian, opined, without evidence, the flag was racist, according to the New York Times.  

This time around Betsy Ross gets a pass, but not so for some Christian symbols of faith displayed by Hegseth, which have been criticized as too closely identifying him as a Christian.  

These include:  

• The Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P), which, when combined represent a shorthand version of the name “Christ”. The symbol has also often been associated with the Catholic left-wing social justice group Pax Christi. It was first associated with Constantine the Great, who said he saw it in the sky before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD. He subsequently had his battle flag made with the symbol.   

• A tattoo of a cross with a sword inside with Hebrew lettering for “Yahweh.” This is a reference to the New Testament, Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  

The previous two, oddly, don’t generate too much controversy. The controversy comes with the next pair.  

Jerusalem at the Center 

Hegseth prominently features a Jerusalem Cross tattoo on his chest, which since the first Crusade has been displayed as a symbol of pilgrimage to the Holy Land  

From the Catholic Telegraph:  

Visitors and pilgrims to Jerusalem will also often receive a tattoo of the cross at the completion of their pilgrimage. This is a tradition that dates back more than 700 hundred years. Perhaps the most famous recipient was in 1862 when Albert, the prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, received a Jerusalem Cross tattoo on his arm during a visit to the Holy Land. Twenty years later, his two sons, Prince George, duke of York (the future King George V), and Prince Albert Victor, duke of Clarence, also received Jerusalem Cross tattoos while visiting Jerusalem.  

The Institute for Palestine Studies, edited in Washington, Ramallah, and Beirut, respectively, confirms the tradition of tattooing for Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem in this Summer 2019 issue.   

Indeed, Hegseth said that he got the tattoo when he visited Israel. 

“We were doing a story about how the Christian population in Bethlehem has been dramatically reduced,” Hegseth explained about the tattoo, according to the Times of Israel. “The guy running it does a lot of tattoos for Christian tourists who come to see the birthplace of Jesus. It was, one, to get the tattoo but more to tell the story of what it’s like to be a Christian in Bethlehem today who has a business just feet from where Jesus was born but also the mosque that’s there in Manger Square.” 

The DoD nominee also has the tattoo “Deus Vult,” which is a throwback to the first Crusade declared by Urban II under the cry “Deus vult! Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”).   

But in the case of Hegseth that tattoo comes from the last line of his book about the fight to reform American government, titled American Crusade: Our Fight To Stay Free. It represents his deep Christian faith that keeps him going.    

Critics have charged that the Jerusalem Cross and the Deus Vult tattoo are symbols of “Christian Nationalism” which they claim is a conspiracy to rewrite history that America was founded as a Christian nation.  

The Lion has searched exhaustively for proof that either symbol represents in more than in an incidental way as any other Christian symbol might, any group associated with so-called Christian Nationalism without result.  

For sure, some will tie any Christian symbols to events like Jan. 6, but those are people merely with opinions, not people stating facts.    

Certainly, Albert, the prince of Wales, wasn’t declaring his solidarity with America as a Christian nation when he got his Jerusalem tattoo on his visit to the Holy Land. 

Hegseth is also controversial for other reasons.  

The AP reported today on an alleged sexual assault by Hegseth in October of 2017, detailing the encounter and reporting that Hegseth later paid the woman in question a confidential settlement to prevent a lawsuit. 

Hegseth has said the encounter was consensual and has not admitted any wrongdoing.