The First Domino

Democratic women lead the fight, all Republicans fail us

[PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images]

In the weeks immediately after Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense was announced, and in the wake of the revelations about an alleged sexual assault allegations, business improprieties, serious problems with alcohol abuse, and his complete lack of qualifications for a job in which he would oversee over 3 million members of the armed services, I did not think he had a snowball’s chance in hell of being confirmed—even with this Republican majority in the Senate.

Yesterday’s hearing proved me wrong. Through a combination of behind-the-scenes strong-arm tactics, hubris, cowardice, and the Republican Party’s imperative to put party party over country, perhaps the worst possible person for the job is going to get the job.

The confirmation of Hegseth, a Fox co-host who once bragged about not washing his hands for ten years, would be as dangerous as it is absurd, in part because the Secretary of Defense is sixth in the presidential line of succession.

A profile in New York Magazine gives a good summary of all of the reasons confirming Hegseth would be disastrous for our military, our service members, and the country:

Pete Hegseth is, by every measure, an abysmal nominee to run the American military. The Army National Guard veteran and former Fox News commentator has no experience managing enormous, complex organizations like the Pentagon and would, as secretary of Defense, be in charge of an $850 billion budget and 3 million active-duty and civilian personnel. His spotty professional record includes having been asked to step down from two nonprofit veterans’ groups whose budgets he reportedly ran into the ground. Questions about his personal behavior abound: He has been accused of rape (he reached a civil settlement with his accuser in 2017) and has a reported habit of excessive drinking, including while on the job and to the point of incapacitation in public. He has defended waterboarding and torture, advocated on behalf of alleged war criminals, and as recently as November he declared, ‘I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles.’”

Hegseth is also a white supremacist and Christian nationalist—and he has the tattoos to prove it.

Only Donald could look at a degenerate like Hegseth and think he’s the right man for the job. Because Donald, of course, looks at this through a different lens: he doesn’t care about the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. He wants somebody at the Department of Defense who will do his bidding and, perhaps as importantly for Donald, who looks the part.

The process surrounding Hegseth’s nomination reveals some troubling details about the way the Trump transition team is approaching the confirmations of all of its more controversial nominees. As Jane Mayer reports:

The Trump transition team has waged an intense, and in many ways unprecedented, behind-the-scenes campaign ahead of the hearing to intimidate and silence potential witnesses, aimed at keeping Republican senators in line and in the dark.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will be holding Hegseth’s hearing, told me, “I’m deeply concerned by an apparent pattern of intimidation and threats, whether it’s legal action or reputational harm. They’re playing the hardest of hardball. It’s harder by several orders of magnitude than in almost any other confirmation.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, another Democrat on the committee, said the pressure tactics “seem designed” to insure that witnesses “don’t speak up.” Blumenthal said that “it’s been pretty unnerving” for Senate Republicans, “because this nominee is so deeply unqualified and unprepared,” yet they fear political retaliation from Trump if they vote their consciences.”

Central to the dysfunction is the role of the F.B.I. background checks. As Garrett Graff writes:

Normally, transitions and administrations want desperately to know potential personnel vulnerabilities in advance. The entire point of a security check is to determine whether someone is already ethically compromised or has potential areas that an adversary could leverage to compromise them — from hidden affairs to gambling problems to substance abuse. At a fundamental level, a security check is about whether a potential nominee is worthy of public trust. You generally, as a point of good government, don’t want senior officials in sensitive positions open to compromise or blackmail.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, sees background checks differently — they want to hide and obfuscate the misdeeds, liabilities, weaknesses, conflicts-of-interest, corruption, and points of existing or potential compromise of their nominees until they’re safely ensconced in the highest level of the US government and already reading the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

Additionally, Mayer reports that,

Several Republican senators have taken the same approach as Collins, saying that they are waiting for the F.B.I.’s background report on Hegseth to assess the conflicting claims about his behavior. But, as the Senate rushes ahead with the confirmation process, the F.B.I. report doesn’t appear likely to resolve much. According to multiple well-informed sources, the Bureau failed to interview several potentially crucial witnesses, including the woman who has accused Hegseth of rape. The F.B.I. also neglected to do a full background interview with the second of Hegseth’s three wives—from whom he reportedly went through a contentious divorce—after initially struggling to get in touch with her. The Bureau failed, too, to interview former employees of Concerned Veterans for America who were critical of Hegseth when he ran the organization, between 2013 and 2016.

As The New Yorker reported in December, these former employees were so shocked by his behavior that they sent a blistering internal whistle-blower report to the nonprofit’s top management—a document that was subsequently shared with the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sources told The New Yorker that the F.B.I.’s background investigation also failed to interview Fox News personnel who had described Hegseth to NBC News as smelling of alcohol on the job as recently as last fall. Instead, sources say that the Bureau settled for an interview with a public-relations official at Fox.

That is the context in which yesterday’s hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee unfolded. The shadow of those threats cast a pall over the proceedings because, despite the pointed, at times, scathing questioning from Democrats, it became increasingly apparent that there was little doubt about where this was all headed.

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That is the backdrop against which yesterday’s Hegseth’s confirmation hearing in front of the Armed Services Committee unfolded. The plethora of red flags notwithstanding, for the Republicans, the conclusion was foregone. At least Democratic senators took their job to advise and consent seriously, and refused to pull any punches.

Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) put the case against Hegseth succinctly:

If confirmed your words, actions and decisions will have real impacts on national security and our service members' lives. There are close to 3 million personnel in the Department of Defense, 900 billion budget. I hardly think you are prepared to do the job.

In other words, a guy who co-hosts a weekend show on Fox has no business being anywhere near the Pentagon. And this is in addition to Hegseth’s glaring character defects and long record of troubling behavior.

Under questioning from Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), Hegseth doubled down on his contention that the accusations of sexual assault against him were simply part of a smear campaign. Kaine’s summary was nonetheless damning:

You didn't reveal any of this to President [-elect] Trump or the transition team as they were considering you to be nominated for Secretary of Defense. You didn't reveal the action, you didn't reveal the criminal complaint, you didn't reveal the criminal investigation, you didn't reveal the settlement. You didn't reveal the cash payment. Why didn't you inform the commander in chief and the transition team of this very relevant event? . . . Because you knew it would hurt your chances. . . . Are there any other important facts that you chose not to reveal to the President-elect and his team as they were considering you to be Secretary of Defense? A sexual assault that would be disqualifying to be a Secretary of Defense, wouldn't it? So you can't tell me whether someone who has committed a sexual assault is disqualified from being a Secretary of Defense. . . . You acknowledged that you cheated on your wife and that you cheated on the woman by whom you had just fathered a child. You have admitted that.

Hegseth’s reply? “I will allow your words to speak for themselves.”

Kaine concluded that being an alleged sexual assaulter who cheats on his wife and who has demonstrated a pattern of sexually harassing women should render you unfit to serve as the head of the Pentagon. A huge part of the problem here, though, is that 49 percent of American voters do not believe that those same things do not disqualify Donald Trump from being president of the United States.

After Hegseth lied about having been “completely cleared” of those charges, Sen. Hirono set the record straight saying, “[Y] our own lawyer said that you entered into an NDA [non-disclosure agreement] and paid a person who accused you of raping her a sum of money to make sure that she did not file a complaint.”

In the past, Hegseth has stated unequivocally, and on many occasions, that women should not be allowed to serve in combat positions. Since being nominated, he has distanced himself from those views, but Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been keeping score.

January, 2013 you told a Fox [ ] interviewer that women in the military simply couldn't measure up to men in the military saying that allowing women to serve in combat roles would force the military to lower the bar. You picked up on that same theme in 2015, making remarks on Fox [ ] referring to women in combat as it would erode standards. June, 2024, you said on Ben Shapiro's podcast, “Women shouldn't be in combat at all.” And then of course we've talked about it in 2024, you published a book and you say on page 26 of your book, “We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units.” On page 48 of your book, you claim that women should not be in combat roles men because men are distracted by women.

It seems to me that if men get distracted by the presence of women in their units, they are the ones who should not be allowed to serve in combat roles.

While Hegseth did modify his position regarding the role of women in the military for the sake of expedience, he was not willing to concede that women are fully realized human beings with rights. This exchange with Hirono was compelling:

Hirono: “Current DOD policy allows service members and eligible dependents to be reimbursed for travel associated with non-covered reproductive healthcare, including abortions. Will you maintain this common-sense policy?”

Hegseth: “I've always been personally pro-life. I know President Trump has as well and we will review all policies, but our standard is whatever the president wants on this particular issue.”

Hirono: If the president tells you that this policy will not be maintained, you will not enable our service members to seek reproductive care.

That, as far as I'm concerned, is all we need to know about Pete Hegseth, although you could say the same about any of his other myriad transgressions and shortcomings. Also, anybody who believes that Donald Trump is now or has ever been pro-life hasn’t been paying attention.

Throughout the rest of the hearing, Hegseth continued to reveal his unfitness across any number of categories:

• He could not name any of the three main international security agreements.

• He did not know what countries are part of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

• He would not discount seizing Greenland if Donald ordered him to do so.

• He would not say whether the Director of Defense should frequent strip clubs and harass strippers while under the influence of alcohol.

Under constrained circumstances (committee chair Roger Wicker [R-MS]) limited senators to one round of questioning during which they had seven minutes to speak with the nominee), Democrats did their jobs while Republicans complained about it.

Senator Markwayne Mullen (R-OK) called out Tim Kaine for suggesting that showing up to your job drunk was inappropriate. He offered an odd defense for Hegseth’s behavior:

How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night? Have any of you guys asked him to step down and resign for their job? And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have.

Okay, well, Hegseth, who, if confirmed, will be in the chain of command as well as responsible for over 3 million employees, has a known history of showing up to work drunk. That's why the question needed to be asked.

Almost across the board, Republicans showed us (or reminded us) that they do not understand their role in this process. They are also not serious human beings. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said, “The very idea that you should have to sit there and answer hypothetical potential in somebody's imagination crimes that may take place at some point, and wouldn't that disqualify you if you were a murderer or if you were a rapist? Unfair, unfair. And I'm embarrassed for this behavior.”

A nominee’s confirmation is not (or should not be) a foregone conclusion. That’s why it is part of a senator’s job to ask probing, sometimes difficult questions about a nominees competence and experience. These hearings are not supposed to be rubber stamps.

While true that it’s historically rare for nominees to be blocked from confirmation, it is even more rare for the president-elect to nominate such egregiously unqualified and, quite frankly, dangerous individuals.

I think Senator Duckworth said it best, “[Our serviced members cannot be led by someone who's not competent to do the job. How can we ask these warriors to train and perform to the absolute highest standards when you are asking us to lower the standards to make you the Secretary Defense, simply because you are buddies with our president-elect?”

This is the problem though: If Donald Trump is the standard by which everybody else is judged, by definition nobody can be unqualified. The standards have been set so low that the bar currently resides at the molten core of the earth.

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As I said, in the weeks immediately after Hegseth was nominated, I felt confident he would not be confirmed. After yesterday, I am almost certain this unqualified, cruel, racist, misogynistic creep is going to be the man leading the United States Armed forces. The likelihood of this increased with the announcement that an original holdout, Jodi Ernst, (R-IA) a veteran and survivor of sexual assault, will vote to confirm Hegseth after all. Despite her background and alleged concerns about the prevalence of sexual assault against women in the military, Ernst refused to meet privately with Hegseth’s accuser, as did Susan Collins (R-ME).

Ernst knows better, but she’s up for re-election in 2026 and she didn’t want to have to face a Musk-backed primary challenger. All but the most cultish Republican know better. Once again, they have chosen to put their own personal power above—well, everything else.

Like the other outrageously unqualified miscreants nominated for positions that will have an enormous impact over the lives of Americans—from Robert Kennedy at Health and Human Services to Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence—Hegseth is uniquely unfit. That’s the point. Donald and his transition team could have found other people to fill these roles who were less personally offensive, more qualified, but equally eager to betray their oaths to the Constitution in order to do Donald’s bidding, but they want to weaken our institutions and degrade people’s confidence in them. Putting the worse people in positions of power will more comprehensively achieve those goals.

These confirmation hearings are a slippery slope. Yesterday, we slid a long way down, and we are only picking up speed.