No Fighting In the War Room: Pete Hegseth Confirmation Hearing Livestream Edition
Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0
The confirmation process for incoming President Trump’s cabinet picks is ramping up, and both parties are focusing on Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth as the front line in the congressional wars to come.
Watch the live steam from PBS here:
For the past several weeks, the former Fox News host has faced withering criticism about his fitness and qualifications for office, as well as explosive allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. Some GOP senators privately wondered last month whether Hegseth’s nomination would even make it this far. Hegseth has denied all allegations against him.
Hegseth also has benefitted from a Senate GOP Conference that has expressed a high level of deference to President-elect Donald Trump regarding his Cabinet choices. Democrats, however, want to make it untenable for Hegseth to continue as the Pentagon nominee, or for Republicans to back him.
Senate Republicans and Trump aides believe Hegseth will get confirmed if nothing new is revealed about the nominee during or immediately after the hearing.
Democrats’ strategy: The Armed Services Committee’s Democrats, led by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), plan to drill down on the allegations against Hegseth, in addition to his previously expressed views on major policy debates within the Pentagon.
This includes Hegseth’s long-standing opposition to women serving in combat roles in the military, as well as his advocacy on behalf of U.S. soldiers accused of committing war crimes. These and other issues outlined in a Democratic-authored memo viewed by Punchbowl News will guide their questioning.
The Armed Services Committee roster includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a sharp questioner; Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who lost both of her legs in combat; and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who asks every judicial and executive nominee if they’ve been accused of sexual assault.
“I will ask him those questions and we will see what his answers are,” Hirono told us Monday night. “I’m focused on the things that are already out in public, such as him signing a [non-disclosure agreement] with the woman who alleges that he raped her.”
The intention may be to anger Hegseth and prompt a reaction that feeds further into the allegations about his personal conduct.
Democrats also tell us they want to spotlight the fact that Hegseth’s FBI file, which as we reported Monday, isn’t comprehensive.
The FBI didn’t interview the woman who filed a 2017 police report accusing Hegseth of sexual assault. Hegseth later reached a financial settlement in 2020 with the woman after she threatened to file a lawsuit. The accuser signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of that deal. Hegseth, whose lawyer said he was “visibly intoxicated” during the encounter, has denied any wrongdoing.
“There are very deeply personal allegations that I think the party should be afforded the privacy of being able to speak in confidence to the members of the committee,” Duckworth said of Hegseth’s accuser.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), another committee member, said she wants to hear from whistleblowers who raised concerns that Hegseth was drinking alcohol excessively at previous jobs.
Latest GOP moves: Senate Republicans seem determined to advance Hegseth’s nomination as quickly as possible. GOP leaders have said they want to prioritize confirming Trump’s national security nominees, and they’ve called on Democrats to eschew slowdown tactics.
This obviously won’t happen with Hegseth, which might be why Republicans scheduled an Armed Services Committee vote on Hegseth’s nomination for Monday — Inauguration Day — as we scooped.
Every Senator needs to ask him how he would lead the Pentagon in fighting a two front war against Russia and China. DoD thinks that’s coming and once it starts, the rest probably doesn’t matter.Report
If we’re in a two front war against Russia and China, I suspect we’ll have much bigger problems.Report
The hearing includes vocal opposition from Code Pink in the gallery and at least two senators have loudly and vigorously questioned him about DEI/Social Hot Button issues instead of pentagon policy.
My assumption is that they’re trying to get him nominated.Report
right, because his known opposition to women serving in combat roles is DEI not pentagon policy.Report
The guy seems like the epitome of a lot of what’s wrong with the MAGA movement. I’m sympathetic to various criticisms of the administrative state and the permanent brass, including some that come from the right. What I’m not sympathetic to is ‘What if we solved those problems by putting a drunken Fox News personality in charge?!’
Of course to me the emphasis by Democrats on the committee of these alleged sexual misdeeds illustrate their own fundamental lack of seriousness and failure to adapt. How many times do we need to trot out some he said she said innuendo that probably can’t be proven one way or the other, as if that has ever once worked (to say nothing of backfiring)?
The real questions are about what qualifies a creature of conservative media and think tank activism to run such a massive and important institution, and whether he will be drinking on the job.Report
Questions about sexual assault allegations speak to his character – which is especially important given the continued “revelations” of ongoing sexual assault problem in the military. Allegations of drinking on the job and financial mismanagement get to the same issues from different angles. None of them should be washed under the rug, and he should not get a pass on them.Report
Yea in theory that all makes a kind of sense but in practice there is limited time and resources to hopefully get the GOP to think twice about what is clearly the most questionable nomination now that Gaetz has withdrawn. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong this time but fifty bucks says whatever these allegations are will be so murky and difficult to substantiate that they won’t change anyone’s mind on anything. The fact that there has not been a prosecution indicates that whatever the story is a prosecutor didn’t feel able to convict in the extremely deferential to authority environment of the criminal justice system.
Doesn’t mean he didn’t do something bad but does mean the chances of this avenue uncovering a smoking gun sufficient to flip a few GOP Senators are extraordinarily low. So you take the time to focus on things that might. Unless of course your goal is to be written up as really verbally sticking it to the patriarchy or MAGA or whoever in the papers, as opposed to maybe actually keeping some clown show out of an important position.Report
I have seen absolutely no interest in the part of the GOP in keeping the clown show out of the circus. So might as well confront him with the ugly truth, even if it doesn’t move a single vote. At least that maintains integrity.Report
I don’t see any integrity in that. Not if they dont have the goods.Report
You don’t believe the women do you?Report
No, but nor do I not believe them. I don’t know what happened, and doubt anyone other than Hegseth and his accusers do. I am confident that you don’t know either and neither does any Senator, regardless of what they profess to believe.
In the case of the Senators they believe whatever they feel is in their interest to believe and unless whatever is presented stands a chance of altering those interests then it’s a waste of time.
What I do know is what I said above, which is that it is going to take way more than this to derail his confirmation.Report
Are they bad at this?
Are they fundraising?
There aren’t a whole lotta options.Report
Counterpoint: You don’t have to enjoy alcohol to run the DoD, but it sure helps.Report
Heh touché.Report
Look, we can’t always nominate people with a perfect resume like Donald Rumsfeld, but we do what we can…
More seriously, I think there’s more than enough ‘ammunition’ to challenge whether he has the experience and institutional savvy to navigate DoD.
A better approach to derailing the nomination is to have shadow candidates (as part of the ‘advise’ portion of the advise and consent) who expose Hegseth for the over extended nominee that he is. This is just another example of political malpractice — it feels better, but isn’t effective.Report
I agree.Report
The GOP isn’t going to do that, and the Dems don’t have the votes to do that.Report
It isn’t about the votes, entirely. It’s about losing a fight in a way that sets you up to win the next one… or, even though the Dems don’t have the votes, arguing that there are better Republican options is the way to get Republicans to get nervous about voting for lesser options and start to talk about better options.
Or… the Dems lose the vote on Hegseth having proposed a better approach to DoD and can bank that for future campaigns.
That’s why I call it political malpractice… it isn’t about always getting *your* guy or *your* way when you don’t have the votes… it’s about making the other team pay a prices for getting *their* way.Report
They should have Lloyd Austin come in and explain the difference between a trustworthy SecDef and an untrustworthy one.Report
Heh, there are quite a few ways to lose the DoD argument available to the Dems.Report
The Department of Defense is the largest, most complex bureaucracy in the world. It has an annual budget of a trillion dollars. Hegseth has demonstrated an inability to successfully administer a charity, and when accused of personally running that charity into the ground failed to meaningfully defend himself. His resume certainly does not suggest any appreciable level of executive competence or achievements. He didn’t even make LTC before leaving active military service. There is no reason to think he’s going to be competent at the job he’s been nominated to do.Report
That’s not to say I don’t care about the raping and the drinking. When John Tower, also a notorious drunk, got nominated for SecDef, the Senate rejected him.
Sadly, the Senate (like a lot of our institutions) really has yet to demonstrate that it takes rape seriously and it would be nice if it started.Report
THIS IS A GOOD CRITICISM!
Meanwhile, Senator Jack Reed (D-IL) is asking Hegseth about his use of the term “Jag off”.Report
Rhode Island. An Illinoisan (at least a Chicagoan) would know about the proper use of jagoff.Report