Hegseth Faces the Senate
Will Hegseth get through? Pete Hegseth, current Fox News anchor and possible future defense secretary in the Trump administration, will face senators in his confirmation hearing later today.
“Hegseth is a decorated combat veteran who was deployed in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan,” reports CNN. “He has earned two Bronze Star Medals for his service in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Since 2014, he’s worked for Fox.
Hegseth has come under plenty of scrutiny for his string of divorces, salacious details of his personal life, and even a sexual assault allegation. These things, and his general inexperience—that might give one pause as to whether he can lead an $800 billion department and 3 million employees—might tank his confirmation.
As for the purported assault: “Hegseth was accused by a woman of sexually assaulting her in October 2017 following a speaking engagement at a conference held by a Republican women’s group in Monterey, California,” reports CNN. “According to a police report obtained by CNN, the woman told police that Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone and then sexually assaulted her even though she ‘remembered saying “no” a lot.’ Hegseth told police that their encounter was consensual and that he had repeatedly made sure the woman ‘was comfortable with what was going on between the two of them.'” Hegseth was never charged with any crime, and during the #MeToo years, he paid the woman some settlement money for her to keep quiet about this, ostensibly fearing the allegations would tank his career.
He’s been married and divorced several times, conceiving a child with a Fox producer while still married. (Affairs also reportedly led to his first divorce, as well as his second.) His mother, during the proceedings for his second divorce, wrote an email to him later made public by the press, including sentences such as “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.” She later disavowed this, noting that she’d scribbled down such words in a moment of rage.
As for his actual views, they’re basically what you’d expect from a Donald Trump pick. Hegseth has called the United Nations “a fully globalist organization that aggressively advances an anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-freedom agenda. Here’s one set of rules for the United States and Israel, another for everyone else.”
“Nato is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States,” he wrote in his 2020 book, American Crusade. “Europe has already allowed itself to be invaded. It chose not to rebuild its militaries, happily suckling off the teat of America’s willingness to actually fight and win wars.” (More excerpts from The Guardian.)
Some senators, like Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, have telegraphed their skepticism of Hegseth from a character standpoint. Others are concerned that he’s “never made national-security policy, served in a senior military role, worked in defense acquisition, or led an organization larger than a nonprofit advocacy group,” as Defense One puts it. At the same time, some of the media-class condemnation of Hegseth is a bit overheated and sensationalist, with one Politico headline
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