Trump replaces Navy Secretary with man who claimed witches took over a California city

Hung Cao’s history of ridiculous claims highlights the administration’s obsession with loyalty over competence

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On Wednesday, Navy Secretary John Phelan was booted from his job, presumably after clashes with Defense Secretary Peth Hegseth. It was a shocking dismissal given that the country is currently mired in a Trump-fueled battle centered around the Strait of Hormuz. But while Phelan didn’t come into the job with any relevant experience—he was a Trump donor who founded an investment firm—his replacement may be even worse.

The new Acting Navy Secretary is Hung Cao, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist best known for his failed attempt to unseat Senator Tim Kaine in Virginia’s 2024 Senate race. Which came after a failed attempt to unseat a Democratic congresswoman in 2022, a campaign in which he compared abortion to the Nazi regime, saying “The Nazis did this. They’ll take Jewish babies and just take the legs and just smash the babies and kill them. You think that can’t happen in this country?”

Hung Cao

Or perhaps he’ll now be best known as the guy who insisted in 2023 that witches had taken over Monterey, California. He made the comments in an interview with fellow anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Sean Feucht.

… We can’t let it turn like this. There’s a place in Monterey, California called “Lovers Point.” The original name was “Lovers of Christ Point,” but now it’s become–they took out the Christ—it’s “Lovers Point.” And it’s really—Monterey is a very dark place now. A lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community has really taken over there. We can’t let that happen to Virginia.

For what it’s worth, the Monterey County Historical Society says “Lovers of Jesus Point” (not “Christ”) was named that way in the 1870s by a man who wanted to create a “Christian Seaside Resort” in Pacific Grove (not Monterey). It was secularized much later.

But Wiccans have not “taken over” Monterey. (One local media outlet quoted a resident who said, “There used to be a witches Meetup group but they haven’t met in a couple of years.”)

Also, changing the name of an area of land to something secular doesn’t mean the world is ending.

And Lovers Point looks pretty damn amazing today.

While Cao has some military experience, unlike his predecessor, there’s no reason to think he won’t use his platform to spread even more lies, much like everyone else in this administration. As a public figure, he’s never chosen the side of honesty and responsibility, so there’s no reason to think he’ll suddenly do that now.

It’s truly incredible that there are people in this administration who have claimed to teleport to a Waffle House, cut off the penis of a dead raccoon, and accidentally quoted Pulp Fiction during a work-time sermon, which means Cao’s claim of a witch takeover makes him one of the more sane members of this administration.

Hell, perhaps the Navy is the perfect place for him to be since the one things he’s clearly been thinking about for a long time is how to drown his enemies.

You know. Engage in a little “crone warfare.”

But in case you think Cao is relatively harmless, keep in mind that his wife April Lakata Cao is an all-out racist, based on things she wrote on her “The Conservative Parent” blog:

… she once told former President Barack Obama to “stay in Africa.”

…

… Cao intimated Muslims should be killed (“peace those Muslims,” she wrote), dipped her toes in the discussion around Obama’s nationality and race, said Black Obama administration officials were racist, and shared conspiratorial InfoWars posts about the Department of Homeland Security arming itself against citizens.

Is there anyone in the upper tiers of this administration who isn’t a nutjob or surrounded by people who are arguably worse? Good luck finding them. The only qualifications you seem to need are a commitment to Jesus, a refusal to put ethics over loyalty, and a non-stop history of batshit crazy comments that live online.

Side note: This is somehow not the only time allegations of witchcraft have affected Republicans. In 2010, Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell released an ad insisting she wasn’t a witch after clips circulated in which she claimed she dabbled in witchcraft years earlier.

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