Establishment Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are attempting to use anonymous allegations against President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, as an excuse to derail his nomination. Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), along with a handful of others, claim they have concerns about Hegseth’s moral character—citing the dubious media reports in a move reminiscent of the Democrat effort to defeat Justice Brett Kavanaugh‘s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
While this small group of Senate Republicans are suggesting that Hegseth’s decades-old alleged indiscretions are a bridge too far, they raised no issue with President Joe Biden’s decision to appoint Dr. Demetre Daskalakis as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator. The National Pulse reported in 2022 that Dr. Daskalakis, who currently serves as the Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has a long history of promoting Satanic and occult themes and imagery on social media—often displayed as tattoos on his body.
A QUESTION OF MORAL CHARACTER?
Alongside his partner Michael MacNeal, Daskalakis launched a “goth” gym in New York City called Monster Cycle. At the time, the gym’s social media pages were full of references to Satanism, the Devil, burning crosses, and pentagrams. In a 2014 post on Facebook, the Monster Cycle page states: “We’ll steal your soul.” Meanwhile, an online review of the gym describes it as more akin to a dungeon, also noting its “cramped co-ed [locker room]” was both “traumatic” and “terrifying.”
But Daskalakis didn’t stop at just ominous posts on the internet. The CDC official has numerous tattoos depicting demonic imagery, including a pentagram lined with a script reading: “I have learned there is light even in the darkest places.” He also has ink showing the corpse of a dead creature, as well as a serpent, a head with three eyes, and what appears to be a saint-like figure across his stomach.
It appears Sens. Ernst and Graham raised little to no opposition to Daskalakis’s appointment.
