Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth clashes with Democrats at his confirmation hearing | USA Elections
Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday for his confirmation hearing. It was the first big test for Donald Trump’s future government and to determine the president-elect’s ability to place his favorites, however controversial, in the government positions he desires. The Fox News television network host and war veteran arrived surrounded by accusations of alleged sexual abuse, sexism, excessive use of alcohol and mismanagement of funds. His answers did not dispel the doubts of the Democratic opposition, which peppered him with questions. But among the Republican legislators, now in the majority, there were no dissonant voices that seemed willing to veto him – and antagonize their leader.
Hegseth, and Trump, seem to have passed the test. The presenter’s greatest triumph came hours after he left the Capitol: The Republican senator most reluctant to support him when his candidacy was announced, Joni Ernst, from Iowa, a veteran of the Armed Forces and survivor of sexual abuse, announced her endorsement. “Our next commander in chief chose Pete Hegseth for that role and after our conversations, after listening to Iowans, and after doing my job as senator, I will support President Trump’s selection for Secretary of Defense,” he declared in a release.
It is a key support, and it will almost completely clear the path of the telegenic veteran to the Pentagon leadership. Ernst’s “no” could have dragged others and condemned the presenter’s illusions to failure: with a majority in the Senate of 52 seats to 48 of the Democrats, Hegseth or any other candidate who needs confirmation for his position can only afford to lose three votes from his bench, assuming that the opposition votes unanimously against him.
Throughout four hours of hearing, and a single round of questions for the 27 committee members, Hegseth defended his positions, rejected most of the accusations as “anonymous slander” and acknowledged that he is not a “perfect person.” But he described himself as a candidate outside the usual standards, an “agent of change” who will turn the Pentagon around and take it into a new era.
A new era in which diversity will no longer be an objective in a department that manages a budget of 850,000 million people and has a workforce of three million workers. “What makes us strong is what unites us, not our differences,” said the man who, if confirmed, will be the second youngest Secretary of Defense in history, at 43 years old, only surpassed by Donald Rumsfeld in Gerald Ford’s Administration. And a stage in which the door opens to a possible purge of senior military commanders. “Each senior official will be evaluated based on meritocracy, standards, lethality and commitment to the legal orders issued to them,” he said.
Questions rained down on him, particularly from female senators, about his position on the inclusion of women in combat positions, something to which he had declared himself completely opposed, in his books and in public comments, before Trump proposed him to lead the Pentagon. Since then, he maintains that he is in favor as long as they strictly meet the standards and the requirements to admit them are not lowered.
Hegseth always avoided specifying, despite questions from Democratic legislators, whether he would oppose any instructions received from Donald Trump, or if he would try to change them. The then-president even asked that soldiers shoot protesters in Washington protests in the Black Lives Matter movement, but Defense Secretary Mark Esper dissuaded him from doing so.
The interrogation had a marked partisan character. The chairman of the committee, Republican Roger Wickers, welcomed Hegseth by assuring that his “unconventional” background and his past as a veteran in places such as the Guantánamo base, Iraq or Afghanistan “may be what make him an exceptional candidate.” Wickers set the tone for Republican interventions, noting that the accusations against Hegseth come from “anonymous sources, in contrast to the many public letters of recommendation we have seen from people who have worked with him.”
On the other hand, the Democrats peppered him with questions about his different controversies: about the complaint of alleged sexual abuse at a meeting of Republican women in 2017 that resulted in a payment to his accuser and for which charges were never filed; about the mismanagement of funds that caused the bankruptcy of the charity for war veterans that he ran after leaving the armed forces; his alcohol consumption, which according to some media outlets extended to his job and even caused his collaborators to have to take him home: Hegseteh has promised not to touch a drop if he is confirmed.
The highest-ranking Democrat on the committee, Jack Reed, was blunt: “I don’t think he is qualified to respond to the enormous demands of this job,” he declared. “A number of sources, including texts written by you, implicate you in disregard for the laws of war, financial mismanagement, racist and sexist statements about men and women in uniform, alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and other problematic issues.”
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who lost both legs when the helicopter she was piloting was shot down in that conflict, was especially harsh on him. “The Secretary of Defense must make quick decisions every day. You have to have breadth and depth of knowledge. Right now I’m afraid he has neither.”
After four hours of interrogation, the television presenter seemed to think he would get confirmation. He raised his fist and took photographs with the supporters who had come to support him. The next step will take place on Monday the 20th: the committee has scheduled a meeting so that the confirmation can be put to a vote in the full Senate.
Hegseth’s inaugurated a series of confirmation hearings for candidates for the Trump Administration. This Wednesday, the meeting of the candidate for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, will be held in the Foreign Relations Committee, who is expected to receive the support of the senators without problems. But other views promise to be much more controversial. Among them those of the candidate for Secretary of Health, the anti-vaccine Robert F Kennedy; the candidate to head the FBI, Kash Patel, who has promised to take revenge on the Republican’s critics. Or the candidate to head the US secret services, Tulsi Gabbard, who in the past had expressed favorable positions towards Russia and had met with the Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.
