Pete Hegseth is the most qualified candidate for the position of secretary of defense under Donald Trump, despite the fact that any other president would likely reject him.
During Tuesday’s most ugly Cabinet confirmation hearing in recent administrations, the former Fox News host fought with Democrats.
While doing so, he laid out a plan for how the president-elect’s most controversial nominees, such as his alternate for attorney general, Pam Bondi, who takes the stand on Wednesday, will manage their own hearings.
Republican senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, who had previously voiced her concerns about Hegseth, stated at the close of business on Tuesday that, should Trump be elected, she would support his confirmation.
On the matter at hand, Hegseth was shaky.
Concerning the Middle East’s potential dangers to US security, he offered few answers and seemed completely bewildered by the geopolitics of East Asia, a region known as one of the most hazardous maritime hotspots in the world. He also failed to address Trump’s plans to stop the war in Ukraine.
Worries that Trump might abuse his authority were heightened by Hegseth. He was evasive when asked if he would follow the president-elect’s orders to order the shooting of protestors and would not rule out the possibility of sending invading forces to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, in keeping with Trump’s expansionist policies.
However, Trump values results more than details. When his subordinates compliment and protect him, he enjoys it. Hegseth followed in his mentor’s footsteps by criticizing military diversification initiatives, calling accusations against him regarding his personal life and drinking too much “smears,” and refusing to apologize for his provocative remarks from the past.
He embodied Trump’s ideal candidate for the dismantling second term because of his ideological fervor, seeming lack of respect for the Geneva Conventions, and disdain for Washington power systems. While Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pretended to be a “change agent” who had “dust on my boots” and was prepared to shake up the Pentagon. In this endeavor, he is aligning himself with MAGA, a group of working-class populists who seek to confront a government that they perceive as having become “woke” and abandoned them.
Difficulty for Democrats in delaying nomination
In their initial attack, Democrats focused on Hegseth’s contentious past and claimed he lacked the qualifications and expertise to lead the most deadly military force in the world and the military industrial complex.
“I have voted in favor of all your predecessors, including those in the first Trump administration,” Jack Reed, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee told Hegseth. “Regrettably, the duties and responsibilities of the position of Secretary of Defense are not compatible with your personality, demeanor, and ability.”
The majority of nominees would have been thwarted by such a personal attack from a senator with Reed’s level of involvement in military affairs.
However, Trump has good cause to be optimistic. Hegseth appeared to be in a lot of difficulty before Christmas as rumors of scandal circulated. At the hearing, though, he was enthusiastically welcomed by every Republican. In a Tuesday interview with WHO Radio in Des Moines, Ernst—who had been the target of conservative media attacks due to her prior doubts about Hegseth and predictions of a primary challenge—said, “He was adequately able to answer all of my questions.” She added: “I will be supporting President Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.”
An advisor to Ernst told AWN’s Jeff Zeleny that while her move does make it much more difficult to criticize and confront the senator, it does not automatically exclude a primary challenge.
With Ernst’s backing, the nominee of Dr. David Hegseth will almost certainly be reported out of committee, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised to move swiftly to bring it to the floor.
His aggressiveness and loyalty to Trumpism galvanized Republicans to his defense, which might be the way to go with future contentious nominations, such as Kristi Noem for DHS and Kash Patel for the FBI. The South Dakota governor’s hearing has been moved until Friday over a delayed background check.
The most extraordinary moment of the hearing came when the normally genial Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine dressed down Hegseth over alcohol use and his personal life. Although he was not officially prosecuted, the ex-Fox news host has rejected a sexual assault accusation. He had earlier stated that the meeting was voluntary. “You have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two after you had fathered a child by wife three,” Kaine added. Since Hegseth was unfaithful to his wife, Kaine questioned if he could be relied upon to honor his constitutional pledge. Hegseth protested that he’d been “completely exonerated” and “completely cleared” and said he wasn’t a “perfect” person but was now reformed.
The plan seemed to be to use allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive workplace drinking, all of which Hegseth has denied, to the same effect as those that ended Sen. John Tower’s hopes of becoming President George H.W. Bush’s Defense secretary.
But 2025 is not 1989, and the standards of a previous age have given way to a Republican Party that long since absolved Trump’s personal, political and legal transgressions and – Gaetz aside – seems keen to extend tolerance toward his nominees.
Several other Democrats took turns to press Hegseth over his past opposition to women serving in combat. Hegseth insisted he wasn’t being sexist but argued that standards had been lowered to reach a threshold of women in combat units. “That makes the combat more difficult for everybody,” he said.
But Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused Hegseth of having a “confirmation conversion” by softening his position on the issue in the days since he was picked for the Pentagon job. New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand accused Hegseth of denigrating women, moms, LGBTQ service personnel and Democrats in the ranks.
These are important questions. But this was also political territory on which Hegseth seemed happy to fight. He was more than ready to get a jump on the culture war Trump has picked him to wage against establishment generals and Pentagon diversity programs.