Today, the Fox News weekend host and Trump defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth will face the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing. Hegseth is clearly unfit for the position and the committee and full Senate should understand that their function is not to be a rubber stamp, but to put tough questions to Hegseth.
Here are some of them that Heghset should answer for senators and the American public:
What has Hegseth ever done that shows he is qualified to lead the Defense Department, with a budget exceeding $800 billion a year and a headcount of 3 million people?
Why was he forced out from the two small veterans groups that he ran? How does he respond to claims of financial mismanagement at the organizations?
What does he say about reports of him being drunk on the job? Hegseth promises that if confirmed, he will give up drinking, but that is a pledge that many find difficult to fulfill. How can we be assured that he will succeed in staying on the wagon?
How does he address allegations of sexual harassment, and in one case, of alleged sexual assault?
This isn’t about political maneuvering or culture war or whatever shield Hegseth will surely try to hide behind. The department he is nominated to run is one of those most complex and wide-ranging institutions on the planet, and his approach to running it — in terms of competence, intent and willingness to stand firm to a president that has openly talked about utilizing the military for all manner of political and law enforcement ends — is of national and global importance.
Donald Trump has a right to have a Pentagon chief of his own choice, provided that person is qualified for the job. That does describe Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, who both served as defense secretary in Trump’s first term. It does not describe Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth did a lousy job with the vets group he ran. How can Hegseth demonstrate that he’s up to the task at DOD, where just the management issues are a thousand times more challenging? Previous secretaries have been flag officers or held other top level government posts or had outstanding private sector experience. Hegseth doesn’t fit any of those categories.
That Trump likes him is not enough.
And then there are real questions of ideology and its intersection with being in charge of the most powerful military on Earth. Hegseth has said in the not too distant past that he opposed combat roles for women, despite that many of those dangerous assignments have been open to female personnel for years. Even if he now supports the policies in place in the first Trump administration and currently, he should explain himself. Having new female soldiers is the only reason the Army is hitting its recruitment goals.
Senators of both parties must use today’s hearing to elicit answers from Hegseth on all these matters. There must be no presumption that he is entitled to confirmation, which applies for such a high level position. The nominee needs to prove that he is fit for the job, which we think for Hegseth will be impossible.
Let the sharp questions come, and we doubt Hegseth will have good answers.