{"id":208484,"date":"2026-04-24T16:27:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T16:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208484\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T16:27:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T16:27:35","slug":"trumps-new-navy-secretary-seems-very-afraid-of-witches-and-drag-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208484\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s New Navy Secretary Seems Very Afraid of Witches and Drag Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for\u00a0The Agenda<\/a>, Them\u2019s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s newly appointed Navy Secretary is raising eyebrows over his concerns that witches in California could spell double double toil and trouble.<\/p>\n

Hung Cao, a failed Republican candidate \u2014\u00a0who ran to represent Virginia in the House in 2022 and in the Senate in 2024, and lost both times \u2014\u00a0has been named as the new acting Secretary of the Navy, the 10th person to hold that title across Trump\u2019s five years as president, per MS NOW<\/a>. Cao has filled in the position for John Phelan, who was abruptly fired<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

His views on America\u2019s naval might, however, are not what has drawn the most attention as Cao rises in the U.S. military ranks. Rather, he seems to have once spread the belief that a town in California has been overrun by witches, whom he said had amassed enough power to take \u201cthe Christ\u201d out of local hotspots.<\/p>\n

In a 2023 interview with right-wing pastor and singer-songwriter Sean Feucht, Cao claimed witches had \u201ctaken over\u201d a city in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t let it turn like this,\u201d he said, while speaking to a pastor. \u201cThere\u2019s a place in Monterey, California, called Lovers Point. The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it\u2019s become \u2014 they took out the \u2018Christ,\u2019 it\u2019s Lovers Point, and it\u2019s really \u2014 Monterey is a very dark place now, a lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community has really taken over. We can\u2019t let that happen to Virginia.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if there weren\u2019t already a masculinist streak in a comment disparaging witches, Cao also criticized the navy \u2014\u00a0often jokingly referred to as the gayest branch of the military, which data supports<\/a> \u2014\u00a0for its 2023 decision to hire a drag queen, Harpy Daniels<\/a>, to be a face of the navy as a \u201cdigital ambassador.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that\u2019s not the people we want,\u201d said Cao, per the Daily Beast<\/a>. \u201cWhat we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them, and ask for seconds. Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Witches? People ripping out their own guts? Sounds like someone just wants to be home playing with Leon S. Kennedy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Further cementing Cao\u2019s seemingly tenuous relationship with reality, he also seems to have previously alleged to have been \u201cblown up\u201d during combat while on the 2024 campaign trail. A USA Today<\/a> investigation found that his history did not support such a claim.<\/p>\n

His record \u201cdoes not show a Purple Heart award, the commendation given to troops who have suffered wounds from \u2018direct or indirect result of enemy action\u2019 that required medical attention,\u201d USA Today<\/a> wrote. \u201cNor does his record indicate that he received the Navy\u2019s Combat Action Ribbon, which requires that a sailor \u2018must have rendered satisfactory performance under enemy fire while actively participating in ground or surface combat engagement.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who has watched Buffy knows that witches can put spells on people\u2019s memory! Willow Rosenberg<\/a>, you got some \u2019splainin to do.<\/p>\n

Get the best of what\u2019s queer.\u00a0Sign up for\u00a0Them\u2019s weekly newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for\u00a0The Agenda, Them\u2019s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays. Trump\u2019s newly appointed Navy Secretary is raising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[10584,9,24,63,122,124,123,655,26650],"class_list":{"0":"post-208484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-drag-queens","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-queens","13":"tag-queens-headlines","14":"tag-queens-news","15":"tag-trump-administration","16":"tag-witches"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}