Trump’s New Navy Secretary Once Asked for KKK Hood With Slits for Eyes

Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of the Navy has said some crazy things.The Pentagon confirmed that failed congressional candidate and current undersecretary of the Navy Hung Cao would be replacing John Phelan, who was abruptly fired on Wednesday. It’s an appalling move, given that Cao once made a poor joke about the KKK in an interview with Steve Bannon.“I know I’ll be attacked by the left, and call me a white supremacist, but I have one ask for them, it’s just than when you give my hood, make sure it’s got the little slits and not the circles so I can see better,” Cao said on Real America’s Voice during his failed 2024 campaign for Senate.Here is a video of new Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao asking for a KKK hood with "slits" as eye holes instead of circles so he can see better pic.twitter.com/grsIKJ3osB— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 23, 2026Cao has also claimed in multiple interviews that he was “shot at” and “blown up” while serving in the Navy, and and has “scars,” describing himself as “100% disabled,” but his service record doesn’t show him receiving a Purple Heart, which is given to service members who have been seriously injured by enemy fire, or the Navy’s Combat Action Ribbon. When USA Today asked him about his service record in 2024, he issued an angry statement.“I want to give you all a window into what it’s like being a combat veteran who had the gall to run for public office against a career politician. Any veteran will read this with the same disgust. Imagine being asked to provide documentation of the dates and times Al Qaeda shot at you. Imagine being asked, if you’re a disabled veteran, why don’t you have a Purple Heart?” Cao posted.In a 2023 interview with a right-wing pastor, Sean Feucht, Cao claimed that witchcraft was occurring in California.“There’s a place in Monterey, California, called Lover’s Point,” Cao said. “The original name was ‘Lovers of Christ Point,’ but now it’s become—they took out the ‘Christ,’ it’s Lover’s Point, and it’s really—Monterey’s a very dark place now, a lot of witchcraft, and the Wiccan community has really taken over there,” Cao said. “We can’t let that happen in Virginia.”Republican candidate Hung Cao tells Christian nationalist Sean Feucht that he's running for the US Senate in Virginia because wiccans have taken over parts of California and now there is "a lot of witchcraft" and "we can't let that happen in Virginia." pic.twitter.com/ML8WtoVe2P— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 27, 2023In the same interview, Cao joked that “I’m African American because I grew up in Africa too,” referring to when his family lived in Niger when they worked for USAID.All of this was known during Cao’s confirmation hearings as Navy undersecretary last year, and the Senate still voted to confirm his nomination. Now he’ll be in charge of the military branch in the midst of a war.