Disputed DOD nominee is ‘best person’ to implement Trump and Hegseth agenda, key conservative group says

An influential conservative group is throwing its weight behind Elbridge Colby’s nomination to serve in a top position at the Defense Department. 

The Heritage Foundation said, in a memo obtained by Fox News Digital, that Colby is ‘without question the most influential defense policy thinker in over twenty years.’

‘For far too long, the United States has employed the Department of Defense – and the men and women of the U.S. military – to engage in activities that were not central to American interests,’ the letter read. 

‘From peacekeeping operations in far-flung theaters, to nation-building among cultures riddled with ethno-sectarian and religious strife, to democracy building in areas with no history of the rule of law, the Department of Defense has spent much of the post-Cold War era expending resources and American lives in conducting operations that are tangential to U.S. interests.’

MAGA loyalists have muscled Republicans who are hesitant of Colby’s nomination to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, mostly over his realist worldview. 

Colby has suggested that the U.S. living with a nuclear Iran is more plausible than countering the country’s nuclear assets, a position that has reportedly prompted concern for Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a member of the Armed Services Committee, which will vote on Colby’s nomination first. 

Colby is ‘the single best person to implement President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s policies within the Department of Defense and ensure that American lives and resources are used judiciously against prioritized threats,’ according to Heritage.

The current acting undersecretary of defense for policy, Alex Velez-Green, was plucked for the administration while working as a policy advisor for the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.

Vice President JD Vance expressed support for the Trump nominee, writing, ‘Bridge has consistently been correct about the big foreign policy debates of the last 20 years.’

‘He was critical of the Iraq War, which made him unemployable in the 2000s era conservative movement. He built a relationship with [the Center for a New American Security] when it was one of the few institutions that would even hire a foreign policy realist,’ Vance said. 

Colby, who worked at the Pentagon during Trump’s first term, has long asserted the U.S. should limit its resources in the Middle East and refocus on China as the bigger threat. 

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told Roll Call that Colby’s nomination posts ‘a concern to a number of senators.’ 

Colby served in the first Trump administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development and was the primary author of the 2018 U.S. National Security Strategy. 

Donald Trump Jr. wrote of Colby in an op-ed for Human Events on Tuesday: ‘He starts off in exactly the right place – with the concrete interests of the American people, not abstractions like ‘the rules based international order’ or spreading democracy in the Middle East.’ 

Meanwhile, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk accused Cotton over the weekend of ‘working behind the scenes’ to kill Colby’s nomination. 

‘Colby is one of the most important pieces to stop the Bush/Cheney cabal at DOD,’ Kirk wrote in a post on X. ‘Why is Tom Cotton doing this?’

Elon Musk echoed Kirk’s post: ‘Why the opposition to Bridge? What does he think Bridge will do?’

Cotton will meet with Colby in the coming days before making up his mind on how to vote, sources told Fox News Digital. 

Fox News’ Julia Johnson and Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.