The shame of Hegseth

Today begins the hearing on his bonkers nomination

Friends,

Today, the Senate Armed Services Committee begins hearings on Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense. If confirmed, Hegseth will head the largest employer in America and the most powerful fighting force in the world.

The treatment of Hegseth — the most high-profile of Trump’s nominees to face senators — will set the tone for how the rest of Trump’s picks will fare. How hard will Democrats be willing to push the nominees? Will Republicans will come to their defense or let them squirm?

For weeks, Hegseth has roamed the Senate office buildings, trying to reassure senators that reports of his wild drinking, sexual harassment, and financial mismanagement of the veterans' organizations he ran were incorrect — just “media smears.” From what I’ve been able to find out, the reports are all true.

Hegseth even had his mother (whose own years-old letter disapproving of her son’s sexually abusive behavior went public) call senators to make his case.

Hegseth promised senators that if he got the position, he wouldn’t drink at all — as if someone with a drinking problem saying I can stop anytime was credible.

But there are issues beyond sexual assault, alcoholism, and financial mismanagement of veterans' organizations that are also deeply troubling about Hegseth.

It’s just been reported that Hegseth has been strongly opposed to removing the names of Confederate generals from US military bases, repeatedly saying the names should be changed back.

He has described the renaming efforts as ‘a sham,’ ‘garbage,’ and ‘crap’ in various media appearances between 2021 and 2024, claiming that the moves have eroded military tradition and were part of what he characterized as a “politically motivated progressive agenda infiltrating American institutions.”

Hegseth has written in a book, An American Crusade, that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics.

Hegseth’s book exhorts conservatives to undertake “an AMERICAN CRUSADE,” to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”, to “attack first” in response to a left he identifies with “sedition,” and he writes that the book “lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies.”

Hegseth’s descriptions of leftists, progressives, and Democrats as “internal” or “domestic enemies” should ring alarm bells for anyone concerned by Trump’s repeated threats to unleash the US military, which Hegseth would directly control, on those he has described as “the enemy within.””

Elsewhere in American Crusade he writes: “The hour is late for America. Beyond political success, her fate relies on exorcising the leftist specter dominating education, religion, and culture – a 360-degree holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.”

Hegseth explicitly rejects democracy, characterizing it as a leftist demand: “For leftists, calls for ‘democracy’ represent a complete rejection of our system. Watch how often they use the word,” adding: “They hate America, so they hate the Constitution and want to quickly amass 51 percent of the votes to change it.”

Hegseth expresses an unstinting loyalty to Trump. At one point in the book, he describes a conversation between the two after Trump, at Hegseth’s urging, in 2019 pardoned three service members who had been charged or convicted with alleged war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Hegseth’s account, Trump called him ahead of the pardon, and the call “ended with a compliment to me that I’ll never forget and might put on my tombstone: ‘You’re a fucking warrior, Pete. A fucking warrior.’ I thanked him for his courage, and he hung up.”

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I hope Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee make all these arguments against Hegseth’s nomination vividly.

Yet notwithstanding all this baggage, I fear Hegseth will be confirmed — along strict party lines.

Hegseth’s fate had seemed to rest with Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, a military veteran who has spent much of her time as a lawmaker working on improving how sexual attacks are reported and prosecuted within the ranks.

“I am a survivor of sexual assault,” Ernst has said. “I’ve worked very heavily on sexual assault measures within the military. So I’d like to hear a lot more about that.”

Ernst’s temporizing over Hegseth prompted a fierce pressure campaign on her from the right, including threats to primary her when she is up for reelection in 2026. She is now expected to support Hegseth’s nomination.

Outside groups affiliated with the incipient Trump White House have been promoting Hegseth in a coordinated campaign. Officials from a conservative advocacy group called Article III Project have appeared on television and on podcasts, including Steve Bannon’s, to encourage listeners to contact senators in support of Hegseth.

Building America’s Future, a nonprofit group that spent $45 million supporting Trump’s campaign directly and through allied super PACs, has aired more than $500,000 in ads on Fox News and elsewhere, calling Hegseth the victim of a “deep state” campaign to sink his nomination.

This morning, just before Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, a group of Navy SEALs and other veterans is planning a rally in support of him at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

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As a former cabinet secretary, I know something of what these jobs entail. Over the years, I’ve worked with and got to know some extraordinary secretaries of defense. Not all of them were Democratic appointees.

Hegseth’s nomination brings to mind the 1989 nomination by President George H. W. Bush of former Senator John Tower to become Secretary of Defense. The Senate rejected the nomination 47–53, largely because of concerns about Tower’s alleged alcohol abuse and womanizing. It marked the first time that the Senate had rejected a Cabinet nominee of a newly elected president.

I can say with reasonable certainty that John Tower was more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than is Pete Hegseth. The Senate should reject Hegseth’s nomination.