Pete Hegseth Declines to Answer
Pete Hegseth, President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, was initially considered one of his most endangered nominees. But after the MAGA movement organized a campaign to threaten Republicans who expressed reservations about Hegseth’s fitness, criticism dried up quickly. “We gave the Senate an attitude adjustment,” Mike Davis, a Republican operative known for his florid threats to lock up Trump’s political targets, told Politico.
That attitude adjustment was on vivid display in Hegseth’s confirmation hearing today before the Armed Services Committee. During the proceedings, the Republican majority displayed no willingness to block or even seriously vet a nominee who resides far outside the former boundaries of acceptability for a position of immense power.
Hegseth’s liabilities can be divided into four categories, each of them individually disqualifying:
- personal behavior, including allegations of drunkenness on the job, of maintaining a hostile workplace, and of sexual assault
- lack of managerial experience, or at least positive managerial experience (According to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Hegseth ran two tiny advocacy groups so poorly that he was forced to step down.)
- a disregard for the laws of war and a habit of excusing the actions of convicted war criminals
- an enthusiasm for domestic political combat that blends into an inability to distinguish Democrats from enemy combatants
Hegseth’s strategy today was to evade these problems altogether. In this, he had the full cooperation of the committee’s Republican majority. If you’ve ever had media training for a television appearance, a common piece of advice is to use the prompt to get to whatever point you wish to make, rather than focus on answering the question. The method generally works on television because the queries are mostly just a way of saying, “Now it’s your turn to talk.” It isn’t supposed to work in a Senate hearing, especially one in which lawmakers have serious qualms about the nominee’s record or statements. But Hegseth, a slick and successful television talk-show host, employed it to great effect.
[Jonathan Chait: Trump’s most dangerous Cabinet pick]
Democrats tried to probe Hegseth’s long record, only to meet endless evasions. Hegseth has categorically denied having sexually assaulted or harassed anybody. Senator Tim Kaine asked him whether the alleged behavior, if true, would be disqualifying. Hegseth refused to say, calling the question hypothetical. When Kaine asked whether spousal abuse would be disqualifying, Hegseth also declined to answer, likewise refusing to opine about the relevance of multiple alleged episodes of drunkenness on the job.
Hegseth has promised to abstain from drinking completely if confirmed. It is a puzzling vow given his unwillingness to concede that drinking on the job would be a bad habit for someone who runs the nation’s military. It is also one to which he’s apparently unwilling to be held accountable, even in spirit: In response to a question from Senator Mazie Hirono, who asked whether he would back that pledge by promising to resign if he violated it, Hegseth declined to answer.
One issue area where Hegseth might have expected more Republican resistance concerned women in the military. In the past, Hegseth has categorically opposed letting women serve in combat. After his nomination was announced, Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican member of the committee, publicly questioned that stance. Hegseth has since altered his position. He now claims that he objects only to lowering the standards of performance, and will permit female soldiers to serve on equal terms if they can meet standards of strength, speed, and other metrics. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren tried to pin him down on that conveniently timed conversion, but Hegseth simply refused to admit to having changed his mind at all.
In one notable exchange, Senator Mark Kelly asked Hegseth to describe a series of allegations about drinking and sexual harassment as either true or false. Hegseth instead robotically replied to each answer, “Anonymous smears,” even after Kelly reminded him that he was specifically asking for an answer of either “True” or “False.” What could explain the nominee’s reluctance to directly state under oath that none of the alleged incidents took place, even as his answer attempted to imply as much? None of the Republican senators pulled on this thread. Their questions mostly consisted of talking points supporting Hegseth’s preferred themes about wokeness ruining the military and the need to restore “lethality” in the military.
Senator Markwayne Mullin proved an exception to the general trend of evading uncomfortable topics. He came to Hegseth’s defense by answering some of the hypothetical questions the nominee wouldn’t touch. “How many senators have shown up drunk to vote at night?” he asked, addressing his colleagues. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it, because I know you have. And then how many senators do you know have gotten divorced for cheating on their wives?”
Perhaps realizing that he was not painting the nominee in the most flattering light, Mullin followed up with the incisive question, “Tell me something about your wife that you love.” He even helpfully suggested that Hegseth mention her wonderful mothering of their children.
Meanwhile, Democrats on the panel complained that Hegseth had declined every offer to meet with them, solidifying the impression that he conceives of the position for which he has been nominated in purely partisan terms. They likewise complained that the Republican majority rejected their requests for a second round of questioning. Hegseth looked like a man who understood that the fix was in, and that all he had to do was run out the clock on the Democrats’ allotted time while dodging their questions. So far, his calculation appears to have been correct.