The Free Press
If you want to know what a post-woke military might look like, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Pentagon just gave America a preview.
At his nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Pete Hegseth pledged that he would direct his secretary of the Navy to focus on rebuilding the fleet instead of climate change. His secretary of the Army would focus on making war more lethal and effective, instead of figuring out how to build tanks that don’t run on gasoline. And the standards for military promotion would be based on merit, not a person’s skin color, sexuality, or gender.
Hegseth said that under his leadership, he would take steps to reverse the Pentagon’s decision to fire tens of thousands of service members who refused to take the Covid vaccine. “In President Trump’s Defense Department they will be apologized to. They will be reinstituted with pay and rank,” the nominee said.
It was a contentious hearing, as Democrats attacked Hegseth for everything from allegations of his marital infidelity and sexual assault to his lack of experience managing an organization as large and complex as the Pentagon. But the Republicans made Hegseth out to be the real victim, and by the time the hearing ended, it seemed like a near lock that he’ll be confirmed.
In the hearing’s most dramatic moment, Hegseth acknowledged that he was deprived of an opportunity to serve with his National Guard unit to defend Joe Biden during his inauguration after January 6, 2021. At issue was a tattoo that Hegseth has on his chest of the Jerusalem Cross, a symbol in Christianity containing the Latin phrase Deus Vult, which is Latin for God wills it. It’s also been adopted by some far-right extremist groups.
“I’d been identified as an extremist, someone unworthy of guarding the inauguration of an incoming American president,” Hegseth said in an exchange with Senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican. “And if that’s happening to me, how many other men and women, how many other patriots, how many other people of conscience?” He pointed out that the Jerusalem Cross was pictured in the program for Jimmy Carter’s memorial service last week.
Cramer was stunned. “You, Mr. Hegseth, are not the extremist,” he said. “The people who would deny you your expression of faith are the extremists. They’re the racists. They’re the bigots. You’re the one that is protecting their right to be one.”
Cramer’s comments show how Republicans successfully revived a nomination that looked dead in the water only six weeks ago. After Trump announced his intention to nominate Hegseth, The New York Times dug up an email his mother sent him during a rough time in his second marriage, calling him “an abuser of women.” An anonymous accuser claimed Hegseth had drugged and raped her after a conference in Monterey, California, in 2017. Meanwhile, two veterans charities that Hegseth ran between 2013 and 2016 came under scrutiny for financial and sexual improprieties. In early December, reports started to suggest Trump might tap Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the top slot at the Pentagon instead of Hegseth.
The one Republican who was widely viewed as a potential obstacle to Hegseth’s confirmation was Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa. She has survived sexual assault and made the issue a legislative priority. A veteran herself, she has also been a proponent of women serving in the military. She served for 23 years in the Iowa National Guard with a tour in Kuwait. In the wake of his nomination, Ernst said she had reservations about Hegseth, who had long opposed women in combat roles.
In response to a question by Ernst, Hegseth said that he no longer objected to women in combat. When she asked whether he supported giving women access to combat roles in the military, he said, “Yes, given that the standards remain high.”
That formulation may be enough for Ernst. Before she began her questioning, she acknowledged, “You and I have had many productive conversations.” Hegseth will need Ernst’s support even though Republicans have a 53 to 47 seat majority.
Needless to say, it was a different story when it came to the Democrats. Almost all of them indicated they would not vote for the former special operations warrior turned Fox News host. But the reasons for their opposition varied.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was critical of Hegseth’s flip-flop on women serving in combat roles. During her questioning of Hegseth, she read various quotes of his expressing his opposition to women in combat going back to 2013. “I have heard of deathbed conversions,” Warren said, referring to Hegseth’s new position on women in combat, which he told Fox News last month. “But this is the first time I have heard of a nomination conversion.”
In a contentious exchange, Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, zeroed in on Hegseth’s checkered past as an adulterer. Seizing on an anonymous Hegseth accuser who claimed he had sexually assaulted her in 2017, Kaine asked about her claims and the fact Hegseth paid the accuser to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Hegseth parried, “Senator, I was falsely accused. It was fully investigated and I was completely cleared.”
Kaine then pivoted to Hegseth’s marital infidelities and his affair with his Fox News producer, Jennifer Rauchet, whom he later married. Rauchet was pregnant with Hegseth’s child at the time of the 2017 incident with the woman who accused him of assault. “You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. I am shocked you would stand here and say you’re completely cleared.” Hegseth countered, “Senator, her child’s name is Gwendolyn Hope Hegseth and she’s a child of God and she’s seven years old. I’m glad she’s here.”
A generation ago, allegations like that were more than enough to stop a nomination in its tracks. That’s what happened in 1989 to George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Democratic senator John Tower for secretary of defense. Allegations about Tower’s past infidelities and drunkenness killed his chances. He ended up losing in the Senate 47 to 53, the same margin by which Republicans control the Senate today.
But the world is a different place now. Hegseth has allies in the conservative media and the broader MAGA movement. The narrative that Trump’s choice for secretary of defense was an unqualified womanizer who couldn’t manage a small charity has morphed into the tale of an embattled truth teller, taking on Big Woke at the Pentagon. And that’s why Hegseth triumphed at Tuesday’s confirmation hearing. With the help of Republican senators, he was able to portray himself as the victim of a smear campaign rather than a victimizer of women. A floor vote on Hegseth comes next.
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