The New Amerika

The Heritage Foundation is going to spend $1 million to pressure Republican senators to approve Hegseth’s nomination. Trump ally Mike Davis, a former GOP Senate aide who is helping lead the online assault, told Playbook he will hire private detectives to investigate the past of any Republican senator who opposes Hegseth’s nomination.

This pressure campaign has materialized because Hegseth is both unqualified and unfit to lead the Pentagon. He is a blackmail magnet—a reckless man controlled by urges, from adultery to alcohol. And Donald Trump wants him anyway.

  Bulwark

Trump wants him because of it.

America’s enemies knew that another Trump term would feature additional foreign financial conflicts for the Trump family, more nepotism, and an explosion of grifting as the president-elect and many of his allies hawk merch from perfume to pills. They knew Trump didn’t release his tax returns the first time he was president, nor meaningfully divest from his business interests, so he certainly won’t do so now.

[...]

Trump backed Hegseth with an emphatic Friday post on Truth Social in which he noted Hegseth’s Ivy League degrees and his “Military state of mind,” and declared “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”

[...]

From Trump’s point of view, a cabinet composed of people with such baggage is a cabinet that will remain loyal to him.

But from the point of view of America’s enemies, this is like Christmas morning.

Remember these days.  One day you'll be able to recall where you were when America fell.

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

UPDATE 10:23 am:

Sen Joni Ernst had a second meeting with Pete Hegseth today. She is currently seen as the biggest obstacle to his nomination. With all the pressure being brought to bear on her from Trump and MAGA activists, it is hard to see how she doesn’t cave. They always cave. Ernst sounded mostly positive about the meeting after, but said she was going to wait for the process to play out with a full background check.

The only news from the meeting was that Hegseth apparently promised Ernst that he would not try and remove women from serving in combat roles, and that made her happy.

  Meidas Touch

Your retribution

“I will rain hell on Washington D.C.,” he said. “I have five lists ready to go and they’re growing. List number one—we’re gonna fire. We’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch of the deep state. Number two—we’re gonna indict. We’re gonna indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumball sleazeball Biden, except for the 5-year-old granddaughter who they refused to acknowledge for five years until political pressure got to Joe Biden.”

“Number three—we’re going to deport. We’re going to deport a lot of people, 10 million people when growing, anchor babies, their parents, the grandparents. We’re going to put kids in cages. It’s going to be glorious. We’re going to detain a lot of people in the D.C. Gulag and Gitmo and list number five—I’m going to recommend a lot of pardons. Every January 6 defendant is going to get a pardon, especially my hero horn man (Jacob Chansley aka the QAnon Shaman) he is definitely at the top of the list,” he said.

  Daily Beast

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