Secretary of Defense

 Pete Hegseth was confirmed by the Senate last night. The vote was tied with three Republican Senators (Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowsky and Susan Collins) voting “no” with the Democrats. Vice President Vance broke the tie to make Hegseth the new secretary of defense.

There are three things I want to unpack from this announcement.

One is the threats to “primary” (that’s a verb) any senator who doesn’t vote for Trump’s picks. Elon Musk, and others, have threatened the senators that they will fund a more “loyal” candidate in the next primary election with as much money as needed to ensure that they win. Joni Ernst (Iowa) was one who was thus threatened. Ernst is a combat veteran who served in Kuwait and Iraq and is a sexual assault survivor. She was naturally reluctant to support Pete Hegseth who has strongly opposed women in combat duty and also has credible allegations of committing sexual assault. Apparently it worked; she voted "yes".

This primaries threat is a blatant example of how wealth can be used to influence government, even by an unelected billionaire. This goes far beyond bribing politicians with campaign donations, or Supreme Court judges with extravagant holidays.

A second issue with Hegseth was the FBI background check which each candidate for presidential appointees undergoes. The FBI reports are first sent to the White House for the transition team (incoming president’s people) to review, then passed on to the Senate committee. The transition team sets the parameters of the investigation, even who gets investigated and who doesn’t. That has worked well in the past because it’s to the advantage of the nominating party to discover and eliminate candidates with secrets that could embarrass the government, turn off voters, or lead to blackmail by enemy agencies (think KGB).

In Hegseth’s case, the FBI were instructed not to talk to his ex-wives or the woman accusing him of sexual assault. A similar situation occurred in the FBI check of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court in 2018, which a recent investigative report by the Judiciary Committee called “a sham”.

For the MAGA Republicans it appears the object is to get the nominees appointed despite any such embarrassing secrets. They aren’t worried about their voters, for whom sexual assault is evidently not an issue, and MAGA’s concern for national security, given the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal, is practically nil. No, their only concern is getting the nominee past the Democrats and the few Republicans who still have a smidgen of ethics. Once in power, nothing else matters. The MAGA Trumpians have no shame.

The primaries threat and the inadequate FBI check aren’t the only tactics that the Republicans used to get Pete Hegseth confirmed. Here is a quote from a January 16 article in the Guardian by Moira Donegan: 

Witnesses who might cast Hegseth in an unflattering light – including the woman who accused him of rape and several whistleblowers who exposed his drunkenness and alleged financial mismanagement as the leader of two veterans’ non-profits – have been smeared in the rightwing media and threatened with lawsuits and public ruin; they have ultimately made the reasonable, and intended, decision not to testify.

The third point I want to make from this news item has to do with DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). The MAGA Trumpians oppose DEI arguing that it forces governments and corporations to hire minorities (racial, women, LGBQ+) who are less qualified than the white men they replace. They call it a form of reverse discrimination. I believe that its purpose is just the opposite – to allow and encourage governments and corporations to hire members of a minority with superior qualifications over less qualified white men. Pete Hegseth is a perfect example.

Hegseth is without doubt the least qualified Secretary of Defense in American history. In the article quoted above, Donegan wrote that his abuse of alcohol and misconduct would disqualify him from holding any leadership position in the military, much less that of principal defense policy advisor to the President. And who does Pete Hegseth replace? The Secretary of Defense under President Joe Biden (confirmed by the way with a vote of 98-1) was Lloyd Austin, a four-star general who happens to be Black.

Sources               

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/pete-hegseth-confirmation-hearing