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Home»Politics»Pete Hegseth Smarms His Way Closer to Running the Pentagon
Politics

Pete Hegseth Smarms His Way Closer to Running the Pentagon

January 15, 2025No Comments7 Mins Read
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January 14, 2025

By brushing off questions about his sexual behavior and excessive drinking as “anonymous smears,” the Fox host charmed the Senate’s GOP majority over the armed services.

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Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth at a Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 14.

(Andrew Harnick/Getty Images)

Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst was elected in 2014 on the promise that her past on a pig-castration farm meant she could butcher pork in Washington. She promised to “make them squeak.”

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday on Pete Hegsett’s totally unqualified nomination to be secretary of defense, a 23-year-old military veteran appeared to lose her own… ovaries? (Unfortunately, there is no good female equivalent.) Clearly, threats to the first Ernst, who was skeptical of Hegseth’s nomination, worked. She put aside her longstanding concerns about the rights of women in the military and her work to combat sexual assault and harassment (both of which Hegsett is fully accused of) and gave the Fox host a warm welcome.

Ernst asked him softball questions, quoted an Iowa executive who worked with Hegsett attesting to his integrity, and generally didn’t appear to be the strong advocate for women in the military that she’s always been.

That was the only small surprise at Tuesday’s hearing. All other Republican senators bowed to Hegseth, praising his promises to fight “reawakening” in the military, fight (non-existent) “quotas” for women and people of color, and ignoring the many claims about his alleged sexual behavior and drinking. a job that worries Democrats — and, in the past, at least a few Republicans. Including Ernst.

Republican Senator Markwayne Mullins put it colorfully. After Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine rebutted Hegsett’s well-documented history of adultery, “Can you casually cheat on your second wife and cheat on the mother of a child that was born two months ago?” he asked, Mullins replied, “Senator Kaine, or I think it’s better to use the senator from Virginia, is starting to bring up the fact that ‘what if you showed up to work drunk?’ How many senators came to vote at night drunk?… How many senators divorced because of cheating?”

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Basically, Mullins defends Hegseth by saying that the United States Senate is full of drunken cheaters. And it just might work.

What was most remarkable about Hegsett’s hearing was not that he abandoned some of his previous positions, particularly his often-stated opposition to women serving in combat positions. This has been consistent with some of his other terrible positions of the past, especially his opposition to “awakening” in the military. And the Republicans in the committee were excited about it.

Hegseth has repeatedly railed against the Pentagon’s supposed “wake up” policy and promised that Trump would issue “new legal orders” based on “readiness, accountability, standards and lethality.” He added: “The troops will rejoice” when the policy of awakening ends.

Asked how he had previously denounced the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Enemy Combatants, Hegseth, a torture advocate, called the conventions “difficult”.

“What America’s first national security policy is not going to do,” Hegseth told the committee, “is hand over its prerogatives to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.”

When Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirona asked Hegsett if he obeyed Trump’s “illegal” orderslike his demand that soldiers shoot protesters “in the legs” during Black Lives Matter rallies in June 2020, Hegseth essentially said yes.


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“I saw 50 Secret Service agents are wounded by rioters who try to jump over the fence, Hegseth said, to set fire to the church and destroy the statue. Chaos”. And when Sen. Alice Slotkin asked if “there are any orders that the commander-in-chief can issue that would violate the U.S. Constitution?” he essentially answered no.

“I reject the suggestion that President Trump will issue illegal orders,” he told Slotkin.

Asked if he would continue the Pentagon’s policy of allowing servicewomen to travel for abortions if they are stationed in a state that restricts their rights, Hegseth did not hesitate: “I don’t believe in the federal government paying for travel to abortion. .”

And he promised that service members sacked for refusing an “experimental” Covid vaccine during the pandemic would be reinstated with back pay “and an apology”.

Hegsett-worshipping Alaska senator Dan Sullivan accused Democrats who opposed the candidate of “extremism.” Hegseth was proud to display his own extremism.

Republicans liked his performance. The Democrats did not. Members of our opposition were more spineless than many of us expected. But I’m not sure it matters.

When asked by Democrats to give “true or false” answers to questions about excessive alcohol use, sexual assault and harassment, Hegseth refused to give them. “Anonymous smears,” he answered repeatedly and robotically, like a trained witness accepting the Fifth Amendment. Tim Kaine and later Arizona Senator Mark Kelly noted that they were mostly no anonymously, to a senator anyway; some accusers apparently met with lawmakers or allowed their names to be used privately during the investigation. I personally felt that this should have been a more important deal that the Democrats pushed during the hearings.

Jane Mayer at The New Yorker reported that both Ernst and purportedly “moderate” Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine refused to meet with the woman who accused Hegsett of raping her. Collins, in effect, insisted that a woman speak before the Armed Services Committee, of which she is not a member.

I understand why victims of sexual assault don’t come forward – look at the example of Brett Kavanagh’s accuser, Christine Blazey Ford, who had to go into hiding. But if one of his former Fox colleagues or a veteran group comes forward, it could change the trajectory here.

Nonpartisan veteran advocate Paul Rickoff tried to reassure Hegsett’s desperate opponents on Xitter: “We’ve got days before a possible vote. Maybe longer. The FBI report was not circulated and did not go far enough. There are brave voices that still want to be heard. And anything can happen. All this is not normal and inevitable.”

“If the vote were secret”, said one moderate GOP senator New York Rebecca Traister“I don’t think he will be confirmed.”

But this is not a secret ballot. And he will almost certainly be confirmed.

Joan Walsh



Joan Walsh, National Affairs Correspondent Nationis a co-producer Sit-down: Harry Belafonte hosts the Tonight Show and author A What happened to the white people? Finding our way in the next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen). Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect America’s Profits, Power, and Wealth.

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