That’s some heat Mark Kelly just threw at Donald Trump’s new pick for U.S. Defense secretary.

The U.S. senator from Arizona and former astronaut just turned the afterburners on Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran and Fox News pretty boy.

“I’d never even heard of him,” Kelly told Cronkite News at the Capitol. “I read somewhere that he spent nine years as a TV host.”

Ouuuuuuch!

Kelly wasn’t done.

“Typically, you expect someone in that role to have implemented or made policy,” Kelly said. “Defense policy.”

Kelly is right.

Hegseth has none of the requisite high-level command or executive experience you expect in a White House pick to lead the Pentagon and America’s 1.3 million active-duty troops.

Pete Hegseth will drag into confirmation hearings a long trail of loosely spoken and boldly written remarks over the years that include his opinion that women don’t belong in the most physical combat roles.

“There are not enough lesbians in San Francisco ... to man the 82nd Airborne,” Hegseth once told conservative podcaster Hugh Hewitt, as reported by The New York Times. “You’re going to need to go to guys in Kentucky and Colorado and Ohio, who love the country, and pretty soon you will need ads that reflect that.”

No women in combat?

Tell that to the Israeli and Ukrainian women who “man” the pocked rubble and trenches of Gaza and the Donbas.

Hegseth is about to get the snap-gloved examination that all cabinet-level nominees endure, and this one won’t be........

© Arizona Republic