Pete Hegseth hearing for Defense Secty

They don't think you matter.

Jayzus.

That promise he made that he wouldn't drink was ridiculous in the first place.

But I won't be surprised if the Dems help confirm him anyway.

"Us".

And, because of those things, shame on any Democrat who votes to confirm him.

And I guess the FBI is already working for Trump.

Kavanaugh, Act II.

And that's relevant to Hegseth's fitness for the job how?

Again, that's relevant to Hegseth's fitness for the job how?

An example of Republican questioning:

And a little background:

The Trump team’s efforts to crush dissent range from public-media campaigns targeting vulnerable senators in conservative states (and paid for by unelected billionaires) to more underhanded tactics aimed at intimidating and discrediting potentially hostile witnesses. Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, for instance, has threatened to sue Jane Doe, Hegseth’s anonymous rape accuser, and her lawyer for defamation if her allegations prevent him from being confirmed. So far, it appears that such tactics may be working. Several potential witnesses, including the accuser, have declined to speak out publicly and have elected not to testify at Tuesday’s hearing.

[...]

According to three sources with knowledge of the situation, Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, is one of the senators who have turned down offers to hear privately from Hegseth’s accuser. Ernst is a pro-Trump conservative on the Armed Services Committeee, and her vote is seen as the linchpin to Hegseth’s confirmation, because she is both a military veteran and a survivor of sexual assault who has championed women’s rights.

[...]

Collins’s press secretary, Blake Kernen, confirmed the outreach but said that the senator believes that such allegations should be brought to the relevant committee—in this case, the Armed Services Committee—of which she is not a member.

[...]

Julie Roginsky, the co-founder, along with the former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, of Lift Our Voices, a nonprofit that fights against the silencing of victims of sexual misconduct, told me, “For senators not to allow a sexual-assault survivor to speak to them is unconscionable. She should be allowed to tell her story.”

[...]

According to multiple well-informed sources, the Bureau failed to interview several potentially crucial witnesses, including the woman who has accused Hegseth of rape. The F.B.I. also neglected to do a full background interview with the second of Hegseth’s three wives—from whom he reportedly went through a contentious divorce—after initially struggling to get in touch with her. The Bureau failed, too, to interview former employees of Concerned Veterans for America who were critical of Hegseth when he ran the organization, between 2013 and 2016. As The New Yorker reported in December, these former employees were so shocked by his behavior that they sent a blistering internal whistle-blower report to the nonprofit’s top management—a document that was subsequently shared with the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sources told The New Yorker that the F.B.I.’s background investigation also failed to interview Fox News personnel who had described Hegseth to NBC News as smelling of alcohol on the job as recently as last fall. Instead, sources say that the Bureau settled for an interview with a public-relations official at Fox.

[...]

The amount of private money being spent on the effort to confirm Hegseth is staggering for a Cabinet nominee. The sum is rivalled only by the cash that has been spent to pressure senators into confirming Supreme Court Justices. This week, one group, American Leadership PAC, reportedly plans to spend a million dollars to muscle wavering Republican senators in five states into approving Hegseth. According to the most recent F.E.C. records, the group barely exists, other than as a political piggy bank for four enormously wealthy right-wing megadonors.

[...]

In December, a dark-money group previously backed by Elon Musk, Building America’s Future, also began pouring money into the fight. It spent half a million dollars on ads pressuring Ernst to support Hegseth after she voiced doubts about him. Musk and other Trump allies have made clear that they will fund primary challenges against Republican senators who oppose Trump’s nominees.

  New Yorker

That article goes on to describe how forces driving Hegseth's nomination (designated "MAGA's flying monkeys" by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse) have targeted whistle-blowers and witnesses who oppose it.

“The danger,” Whitehouse told me, “is that people with a lot of resources could threaten and intimidate shy people, or people with fewer resources, from telling the truth.” Dark-money groups, he notes, “are all waging campaigns to whip up the Internet hate community. They create terror and fear, which puts witnesses in an impossible position. Either they stay anonymous, in which case the senators say, ‘I don’t believe you,’ or they go public and get attacked and terrorized by people saying ‘I hope your children die,’ and worse. It’s grotesque stuff.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01/15/2025:

Of course she will.  It was ridiculous to imagine she might not.

Also, Kate Collins asks the question I had:

Has Jenna Ellis fallen out with Trump?  Did I miss something?  Forget something?

One consistent theme coming from Hegseth was constant and effusive praise for Trump. He mentioned Trump’s name while praising him well over 100 times, knowing full well that Dear Leader was watching.

The topic of Hegseth’s mismanagement of his veteran’s charity, which ultimately led to his removal from it, came up where he was questioned about failing to balance it’s budget as well as behavior at a strip club with employees that led to a lawsuit. He was evasive on all these questions and continued to emphasize how proud he was of his work. He refused to say whether he was removed for cause from the charity or left on his own.

He was asked about his repeated statements, including in his book published last year, that women should not serve in combat. This was a key issue for combat vet Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who was considered a key vote for Hegseth after her initial reaction to his nomination was not positive. Hegseth just renounced everything he said about that and now claims he fully supports women in combat.

Hegseth was also asked about his Fox co-workers saying that he was frequently drunk on the job and had a serious drinking problem. That included multiple incidents where he drank to the point where he passed out in public places and had to be carried out by employees. He denied all of it, claimed it was all simply based on anonymous sources (it wasn’t).

[...]

[He] kept saying that he didn’t think that Trump would ask him to do anything illegal.

Slotkin then asked if he opposed using the military to run migrant detention camps, and he said that the border was an issue of national security and would do what Trump asked him to do to stop the “migrant invasion.”

[...]

Probably the most bizarre line of questioning came from Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who went on a lengthy rant about Jesus, how much he loves his wife and how he would probably be in prison right now if it wasn’t for his wife, how his wife has had to forgive him for transgressions multiple times, then finally asked Hegseth this question: “Tell me something about your wife you love.” He didn’t specify which one of Hegseth’s wives he was asking about.

  Meidas Touch