Republican senators don’t seem too worried about all of the damning reporting emerging about Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.
“They’re throwing disparaging remarks at someone who has earned a great deal of credibility. Are soldiers sometimes wild childs? Yeah, that can happen,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told NBC News on Monday, the day after The New Yorker reported that Hegseth’s problematic behavior led two separate veterans groups to force him out of his leadership role.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) added that he’s “known Pete for a while, so in my experience with him has always been positive.” In a Monday post on X, formerly Twitter, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wrote that Hegseth is “an outstanding choice for Secretary of Defense” and that she is “confident he will bolster our military and make an excellent addition to the Trump administration.”
The wave of support came as Hegseth, a former weekend Fox News host, has been meeting with the Republican senators who will decide whether he’s fit to lead the Pentagon. The senators currently backing Hegseth are largely staunch Trump supporters, and their public praise of Hegseth may be an attempt to pressure more moderate members of the GOP caucus to similarly write off the allegations against him..
Trump’s team is doing similar work. “When it comes to Pete Hegseth, there aren’t any concerns,” Trump adviser Jason Miller told CNN on Tuesday. “We feel very good about his positioning for being confirmed by the Senate.”
Despite Miller’s professed lack of concern, Rolling Stone reported that members of the Trump transition team were livid at Hegseth for failing to be transparent about the skeletons in his closet before the nomination went public. “Pete wasn’t interviewing for a job at McDonald’s; this is the fucking Pentagon!” said one source close to Trump told Rolling Stone, adding that “even if the allegations are fake, it doesn’t matter because he was supposed to tell us what we needed to know so we could be better prepared to defend him — not learn about it from the media.”
Fox News, Hegseth’s former network, seems to be ignoring the scandals around him entirely. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that Fox News hasn’t even mentioned The New Yorker report, or a story from The New York Times about how Hegseth’s mother wrote him a letter calling him an “abuser of women.”
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote. “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.”
Shortly after Trump nominated Hegseth to head the Department of Defense last month, reporting emerged that he had quietly settled a disturbing sexual assault allegation against him in 2017. More damning reporting has followed, most notably The New Yorker’s
scathing investigation into Hegseth’s time heading two veterans organizations: Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), and Veterans for Freedom (VFF).
According to The New Yorker, which obtained a whistleblower complaint, while working at CVA Hegseth cultivated a culture of sexism, with he and other members of his management team sexually pursuing female staffers. In one reported incident, he took members of the CVA staff to a Louisiana strip club where he “was so drunk he tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers,” according to the whistleblower, and where another male staffer allegedly attempted to sexually assault a female CVA employee, who later settled a complaint against the organization, according to The New Yorker.
In another instance, while on a rally tour with CVA, Hegseth and other members of the group traveling with him began chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” at a bar in what was described as “a drunk and a violent manner” in a complaint filed about the incident.
At Veterans for Freedom, Hegseth was forced out of leadership after reportedly racking up hundreds of thousands in unpaid bills for the organization. When Hegseth departed, VFF sent a letter to CVA warning them that Hegseth “treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account — for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the road.”
The Department of Defense has a budget of almost $2 trillion, and oversees a diverse civilian and military force of employees and service members. Trump’s pick to take the reins is racked with scandal, and couldn’t even successfully lead two veterans groups. Republican senators may punt on their “advice and consent” role and confirm him anyway.
