The most depressing defining moment of the Senate confirmation hearing for Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, was at the beginning of former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s introduction of him. I visited.
“Four years ago, President Biden’s nominee, Lloyd Austin, was a good and honorable man who received 97 votes on the Senate floor,” Coleman said. It endangered our shipping lanes and America provided insufficient support to Israel. It seemed to mean that the good and honorable thing had failed and it was time to try something else.
Hegseth is different. As widely reported, he paid a woman in 2020 to file a police report alleging sexual assault. As Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker, Hegseth was “removed from both of the nonprofit advocacy organizations he ran, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.” “Forced to resign” amid serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual misconduct, and personal misconduct. ” In an email obtained by The New York Times, his own mother said he “disrespects, lies, cheats, sleeps with and exploits women for his own power and ego.” writes. (She later denied the message.)
But this is President Trump’s America. Abusing or degrading women clearly does not disqualify them from holding high office. A Democratic Senate aide told New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister that a successful hearing means “rather than leaning into the rape allegation, it creates space for Republicans to object because they can too.” ”. Much of Tuesday’s hearing appears to be concerned with searching for those grounds, but it’s not clear whether they exist.
Some Democratic lawmakers may have taken note of Hegseth’s derogatory comments about female soldiers and hoped to hear from Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, a veteran and advocate for military women. I don’t know. (“We need mothers,” Hegseth writes in his book, “but not in the military, especially in combat units.”)
Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois and an Iraq war veteran, nailed his utter ignorance of American defense policy. At one point, she asked him to name the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, one of the ASEAN countries, and explain the security arrangements with them. Unable to do so, he instead blurted out three countries that are not members of ASEAN: Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Former astronaut and Navy veteran Mark Kelly of Arizona slammed him for numerous reports that he drank while on duty. Michigan’s Gary Peters proved that Hegseth never led an organization with more than a few hundred people. The Department of Defense employs approximately 3 million people.
Any of these should derail this ridiculous nomination. None of them will do that.
The public hearing lasted about four hours. The Democratic Party’s second question request was rejected. They only scratched the surface of Hegseth’s record, but Republicans had heard enough.
