Elizabeth Warren Slams Pete Hegseth for Refusing to Meet With Her About His Record on Women | Video
Elizabeth Warren did not hold back while grilling President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth on Tuesday. As part of the embattled Republican nominee’s confirmation hearing, the senator from Massachusetts accused Hegseth of refusing to meet with her over his track record with women in the military and assured him “we’ll just have to do it here and dive in.”
“So if you’re confirmed as Secretary of Defense, you will oversee our military, including about a quarter of a million women who currently serve on active duty, Warren began. “And I have serious concerns that your behavior toward women disqualifies you from serving in this role.”
About two minutes into her remarks, Warren targeted the main point of her argument: statements that Hegseth has publicly made that disparage women from serving in the military dating back to 2013 all the way to just weeks before Trump nominated him to defense secretary.
“I want to be clear here: For 12 years, you were quite open about your views, and your views were consistently the same. Women are inferior. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and guardians — and incase anyone missed the point, and these are your words from 10 weeks ago: Women absolutely straight-up should not be permitted to serve in combat,” Warren railed. “And I notice on each of these quotes, those are said without qualification. It’s not by how much you can lift, or how fast you can run. They don’t belong in combat, period. Or your words, ‘straight-up.’
“And then on Nov. 9, just 32 days after your last public comments saying that women absolutely should not be in combat, you declared that ‘some of our greatest warriors are women,’ and you support having them serve in combat,” Warren continued. She asked him pointblank: What “extraordinary event” happened in that month window that made him change his mind?
Hegseth, who has answered to such framing of his track record before, argued that the issue of women in the military “has always been about standards” — but to Warren’s point, he had not previously expressed it as such. It was a “straight-up” declaration that women did not belong in active duty.
“What I see is that there is a 32-day period in which you suddenly have another description about your views about women in the military, and I just want to know what changed in the 32 days that the song you sang is not the song you come in here today to sing,” Warren said, before pointing to where she’d been leading all along: Trump’s nomination.
“I’ve heard of deathbed conversions, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a nomination conversion,” the senator quipped. “And I hope you understand that many women serving in the military right now might think that if you can convert so rapidly your long-held and aggressively pursued views in just 32 days, that 32 days after you get confirmed, maybe you’ll just reverse those views and go back to the old guy who said straight-up, women do not belong in combat.”
Watch the full clip of Warren’s time with Hegseth in the video below, via Fox News.
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