If Senate Democrats' uncoordinated performance during Tuesday's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth is a sign of things to come, Donald Trump's Cabinet picks will be at ease.
Mr. Hegseth breezed through much of the four-hour hearing, spending most of it talking about Democrats waiting quietly for the “Fox & Friends” host to finish his monologue. Only a few lawmakers tried to push back against Hegseth's abuse, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Maisie Hirono (D-Hawaii). (D-Ill.) and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). ). But Hegseth, a veteran broadcaster accustomed to combative interviews, was wiser than to take the bait.
If Hegseth's goal was peaceful, he almost succeeded. But if Hegseth's text was intentionally flat, his subtext was anything but. Hegseth has made it clear time and time again that he is a hard-line Republican with big ideas but little practical understanding of America's most important branch of government.
Fortunately for Hegseth, today's Republican Party does not consider incompetence a disqualifying factor.
It's clear that Mr. Hegseth has learned the language for expressing right-wing grievances after years of working at Fox News. He went on a rant about the dangers of “electric tanks” and peppered his responses with criticism of tanks. “The army has woken up.” he swore this “Separating the roots and branches of DEI and CRT efforts” He came from the Pentagon and verbally rattled his saber. “Communist China”.
Hegseth's response, which brought all the energy of his Fox News segment, was clearly aimed at viewers watching Mar-a-Lago.
But if you dig past the surface anger, Hegseth has none of it. Given three opportunities by Duckworth to name the countries involved in ASEAN, namely the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Hegseth said: I couldn't say anything. This is especially worrying given that Hegseth had just finished giving a canned answer about how important it is to support ASEAN to counter China's growing influence in the Pacific. That's true. Oops!
It wasn't just Democrats who tripped up Hegseth. Sen. Mike Rounds (RS.D.) asked Hegseth a direct question about whether the United States could fight a multi-pronged war against “quasi-peer adversaries” like Russia and China. This is the kind of technical question that the Secretary of Defense faces on a regular basis. But Hegseth had no answer. Mr. Hegseth did not address any of Mr. Rounds' questions, instead praising Mr. Trump's strength as a leader.
How Hegseth prepared for the hearing provides valuable insight into how the political dynamics have changed under the reinstated Trump administration. Despite pledging to serve “both Republicans and Democrats” if confirmed, Hegseth’s team refused to meet There is only one Democratic senator heading into Tuesday's hearing. When Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked why Mr. Hegseth had refused repeated requests to meet with him, Mr. Hegseth replied dismissively, “My schedule is full.”
It didn't take long for Hegseth to abandon his poetic commitment to bipartisanship. In his first reaction, he blamed a series of media articles about him on shadowy forces on the left. Allegations of misconduct and sexual assault in the workplace. “Our left-wing media…doesn't care about the truth,” Hegseth said. said. “They're trying to destroy me because I'm a change agent and I'm a threat to them.”
Gone is the tradition of candidates vying toward the center to impress both sides. In a sharp exchange with Sen. Angus King (Maine), Hegseth declined to express explicit support for the Geneva Conventions, particularly for limits on torture. In one of the few direct responses of the day, Hegseth said: claimed That the Geneva Conventions and other laws written by people in “air-conditioned offices” impede America's ability to wage war.
Hegseth also tried to explain what he was looking for. Amnesty for convicted American war criminals — something that might have aroused Republican skepticism in another political reality. In cases of war crimes, Hegseth always insisted on “default against combatants” and made no excuses for seeking amnesty for those convicted by the military for human rights violations. That outrageous answer didn't even merit a follow-up from the Democratic Party.
Despite insisting from the beginning that politics “plays no role” in the military, Mr. Hegseth was determined to eradicate it. DEI, cathode ray tube And other “progressive” politics in the Pentagon tell a different story. Like many of his MAGA ilk, Hegseth sees liberal demons behind every door and feels a moral obligation to eradicate them. It doesn't seem to matter that those demons are entirely imaginary.
Mr. Hegseth is definitively unqualified to be Secretary of Defense, but the Democrats' uninspired questioning did a terrible job of demonstrating that fact to the public. Hegseth is now on track for Senate confirmation, which would have seemed outlandish even a month ago. If that happens, America's fighting men and women will be in dire straits.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
