Senate Democrats fail to rattle Pete Hegseth

By Philip Wegmann
Real Clear Wire

A decade of live television sharpened Pete Hegseth so much so that even Senate Democrats acknowledged his ability to mobilize the talking point during a confirmation hearing before the Armed Services Committee, marking another battle in an ongoing culture war.

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he would back Hegseth to be the next “spokesperson for the Pentagon,” assuring President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, “I don’t dispute your communication skills.” Later, not halfway through the hearing, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono felt compelled to remind the quick-witted nominee, “You are no longer on Fox and Friends.”

The former Fox News host might as well have been. The cross-examination was little different than the heated debates over ideology, personal morality, and institutions that drive ratings on cable news. More pundit than politician, Hegseth was characteristically blunt about the mission Trump wants him to pursue if confirmed: Root anything “woke” out of the Pentagon and “restore a warrior culture to the Department of Defense.”

Unlike many of his predecessors, Hegseth is not a retired general or seasoned government official and he has comparatively limited executive experience. He is a combat veteran and television anchor with ivy league degrees. But the former Army major’s main qualification in the eyes of the incoming administration is a rejection of political correctness in the military. In Tuesday’s committee hearing, he did not blink or abandon the views he has expressed for years in print and on air.

He delivered a full-throated condemnation of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies that were hallmarks of the Biden Pentagon. “This is not a time for equity,” the nominee said, arguing instead for “equality” among the ranks that emphasizes meritocracy in pursuit of a common purpose, not prescribed outcomes and quotas based on immutable characteristics like race, gender, or sexual orientation.

“Equality is the bedrock of our military, men and women, duty positions in uniform, black, white, doesn’t matter. We treat you equally based on who you are in the image of God as an individual. And we all get the same bad haircuts. You’re not an individual. You’re part of a group,” Hegseth said.

Republicans loved that they were hearing from a nominee who said many of the same things Trump said to get elected. Begrudgingly impressed, Democrats were, all the same, appalled. Hegseth does not need their votes. When allegations of professional and sexual misconduct surfaced, which he denies, the nominee focused instead on maintaining support among the GOP majority. Democrats on the committee complained repeatedly that Hegseth didn’t even bother to meet with them privately prior to the hearing.

Hegseth did moderate on at least one front. “Women will have access to ground combat roles,” he said, walking back past statements but before qualifying that standards must “remain high, and we will have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded.”

“Now that is a very, very big about-face in a very, very short period of time,” interjected Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts Democrat noted that Hegseth had said definitively, for over a decade and as recently as last November, that women “straight up” should not be in combat.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand also referenced those past statements and told Hegseth he had “denigrated active-duty service members.” During one exchange, the New York Democrat took issue with Hegseth’s past comments that mothers shouldn’t deploy to combat. “What’s wrong with a mom, by the way,” she asked. “Once you have babies, you therefore are no longer able to be lethal?” That sentiment, Gillibrand concluded, was “a silly thing to say.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth later took umbrage with how much attention the issue was getting even though it was her fellow Democrats who first raised the question. “This hearing now seems to be a hearing about whether or not women are qualified to serve in combat,” said the Illinois Democrat, who is herself a combat veteran, “and not about whether or not you are qualified to be Secretary of Defense.”

Democrats took particular issue with Hegseth’s lack of executive experience, considering the fact the Pentagon has a workforce of more than 3.5 million service members and an annual budget of more than $900 billion. “I don’t know of any corporate board of directors that would hire a CEO for a major company if they came and said, you know, I supervised 100 people before,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters after pressing the nominee for details about his time as executive director of the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America.

While Hegseth did not dispute that he lacks the résumé to oversee such a massive bureaucracy, his nomination comes at a moment of decreased trust in institutions across the board and in the military specifically. He pointed to administrative bloat as the reason for the sclerotic fighting force, arguing that the U.S. won World War II with just seven four-star generals but today has far more generals and fewer victories. “We don’t need more bureaucracy at the top,” he told lawmakers. “We need more warfighters empowered at the bottom.”

Watching remotely, the president-elect endorsed this sentiment, writing in a social media post that Hegseth had made “a powerful point.” J.D. Vance, a military veteran himself, took no issue with the nominee’s unorthodox résumé. Citing low recruitment numbers, he wrote that Hegseth is assuredly “NOT more of the same, and that’s good!”

After Sen. Peters concluded that the nominee lacked the requisite management experience to lead such a “complex organization” as the Pentagon, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi deadpanned that Hegseth had “supervised far more people than the average U.S. senator,” inducing laughter from the veterans sitting in the front row in support of Trump’s pick.

The Hegseth nomination seemed imperiled for a time after allegations of sexual assault and reports of excessive drinking came to light late last year. On Tuesday, however, Republicans seemed poised to report him out of committee favorably. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, once considered a Hegseth skeptic, told a local radio station that she would support his nomination, in large part, because “he pointed out the woke issues at the Pentagon.”

Concerning a sexual assault allegation from 2017, which Hegseth and his lawyers say was consensual, the nominee replied, “I was falsely charged, fully investigated, and completely cleared.” Reports of frequent excessive drinking? Those were “anonymous false claims,” he countered, dismissing them as smears peddled by “left-wing media.” He did not, however, escape the kind of moralizing that was once characteristic of the religious right. This time, it came from the left.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, repeatedly chastised Hegseth for committing “adultery.” “You think you were completely cleared because you committed no crime,” Kaine said. “That’s your definition of cleared?” Zeroing in on the extramarital affair, he called into question the nominee’s fidelity. “You’ve taken an oath, like you would take an oath to be secretary of defense, in all of your weddings, to be faithful to your wife,” Kaine continued.

“Can you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child who had been born two months before, and you tell us you were ‘completely cleared?’” Kaine added.

“I sit here before you, an open book,” Hegseth replied before returning to his earlier testimony about turning his life around. “I have failed in things in my life,” he told the committee. “And thankfully, I’m redeemed by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Hegseth, dressed in a blue blazer with an American flag stitched in the interior lining, showed no evidence of being rattled throughout the nearly four-hour ordeal. The Republicans who came to his defense were not so calm.

“You forgot you got a big plank in your eye,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, said in a biblical reference to hypocrisy. Mullin, a close Trump ally, called into question the clubby nature of the Senate and his colleagues who inhabit it. “How many senators have shown up drunk to vote at night?” he demanded to know. “Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign from their job?”

Implying that this was common practice, Mullin warned his colleagues, “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it because I know you have.” He continued, “and then how many senators do you know [who] have gotten a divorce for cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down? No.”

At this, there was more laughter from the audience. Hegseth did not respond to the aside. He was reserved, as he had been throughout much of the day, no doubt aware that a wrong answer or reaction could alienate Republicans and sink his nomination. At the end of the highwire act, the nominee raised his fist in triumph and mingled with supporters.

“This was a tour de force, a takedown, a triumph,” Wicker told reporters after the hearing. “I think it was a magnificent display. I don’t think it could have gone any better.” Other Trump nominees will likely study his example. Few have as much experience debating hot-button issues in a pressure cooker environment, however, as the former Fox anchor.