Former Fox TV host and Army major Pete Hegseth is testifying before a Senate panel that could advance his nomination to become America’s 29th Pentagon chief. The packed hearing began at 9:30 a.m. ET, and is livestreaming via the Senate Armed Services Committee, here.
Numerous personal controversies have followed Hegseth into the public light since President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate the former TV personality as defense secretary nearly two months ago. “A variety of sources—including your own writings—implicate you with disregarding laws of war, financial mismanagement, racist and sexist remarks about men and women in uniform, alcohol abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other troubling issues,” said ranking member Democratic Sen. Jack Reed in his opening statement at Tuesday’s hearing. “I have reviewed many of these allegations, and find them extremely alarming.”
“Indeed, the totality of your own writings and alleged conduct would disqualify any servicemember from holding any leadership position in the military, much less being confirmed as the Secretary of Defense,” said the Rhode Island senator and Army veteran, who warned Hegseth bluntly, “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.”
Republican Chairman Roger Wicker and his GOP colleagues had a different interpretation of Hegseth’s anticipated impact within the Pentagon, and the significance of his beleaguered past. “Admittedly, this nomination is unconventional,” Wicker said in his opening statement. “That may be what makes Mr. Hegseth an excellent choice” to help the Pentagon pass an audit, accelerate acquisition reform, improve the F-35 program, speed up the Sentinel ICBM replacement efforts, and improve the U.S. Navy’s lagging shipbuilding efforts, Wicker said.
“Today’s Department of Defense is no longer prepared for great power competition,” Wicker insisted. Hegseth “is a decorated post-9/11 combat veteran. He will inject a warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down,” the chairman said. “Mr. Hegseth will bring energy and fresh ideas to shake up the bureaucracy. He will focus relentlessly on the warfighter and the military’s core missions: deterring wars and winning the ones we must fight.”
Hegseth “will bring a swift end to corrosive distractions such as [diversity, equity, and inclusion],” Wicker said without elaborating. “In short, I am confident Mr. Hegseth, supported by a team of experienced top officials, will get the job done,” the chairman added.
For what it’s worth, as chairman, Wicker has allowed only one round of questions from senators on the panel, which Reed noted “is not custom” from past nomination hearings. Reed requested at least one more round of questions, but Wicker would not bend.
Hegseth referred to himself as a “change agent” and said that’s why Trump selected him to lead the Pentagon. He also blamed “left-wing media” for orchestrating what he described as a “smear campaign” in terms of the allegations against him, which Reed noted above. Wicker, as well, blamed “liberal media publications” for the public knowing about Hegseth’s past indiscretions.
Bigger picture, in his own words: “If confirmed, on day one I would immediately be challenged to posture our military and the Pentagon to deter further deterioration of the situations in Ukraine, Israel, Syria, and other instability around the world,” Hegseth said in a written response to lawmakers’ questions (PDF). “Simultaneously, if confirmed I would immediately address the test from the Chinese Communist Party and tackle head-on any areas that may cause the Chinese Communist Party to perceive an opportunity for aggression,” he said.
When pressed on his dismissive views on women serving in the military, Hegseth told New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen that he is no longer so dismissive, despite dedicating an entire chapter to the matter in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors. Shaheen didn’t seem terribly convinced, and replied, “I appreciate your 11th-hour conversion, but Mr. Chairman, for the record I would like to submit chapter five, ‘America’s (Deadly) Obsession with Women Warriors,’” which Sen. Wicker permitted.
A second opinion: “You will have to change how you see women to do this job well, and I don’t know if you are capable of that,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, said to Hegseth during her round of questioning. “I have never disparaged women serving in the military,” Hegseth replied. He then claimed infantry training units have “quotas” to get a certain number of women into the ranks. “In ways direct, indirect, overt and subtle, standards have been changed inside infantry training units, Ranger school, [and] infantry battalions to ensure that commanders meet—” Gillibrand then asked for a specific example of this.
Hegseth: “Commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted, and that disparages those women who are incredibly capable of meeting that standard,” Hegseth alleged, citing discussions during the writing of his 2024 book.
“Commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. That does not exist,” Gillibrand replied forcefully. “It does not exist. And your statements are creating the impression that these exist, because they do not. There are not quotas.”
Stay tuned: The hearing is still ongoing. You can check the livestream here.
Related reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt met in Casablanca and agreed to press the Axis until unconditional surrender.
Around the Defense Department
Coming soon: USS William J. Clinton and George W. Bush. President Biden announced on Monday that the future U.S. Navy aircraft carriers CVN 82 and CVN 83 will bear the names of two of his predecessors. “When I personally delivered the news to Bill and George, they were deeply humbled,” Biden said in a White House statement. (The announcement departed from general precedent in two ways: first, ship names are generally announced by the Navy secretary, and they are not generally of living people. “Some observers have perceived a breakdown in, or corruption of, the rules for naming Navy ships,” the Congressional Research Service wrote on Jan. 5.)
Watch: cockpit video from a California National Guard C-130J helping to fight the Palisades fire. Via DVIDS, here.
Shipbuilder plans expansion to boost submarine production. Huntington Ingalls Industries aims to increase its manufacturing capacity this year to speed up nuclear submarines amid ongoing delays, ballooning costs, and labor woes. “We’re expanding into Texas, Louisiana. We’ve expanded in Norfolk, Virginia. You see this expansion in South Carolina. We’re going to where the labor is,” HII CEO Christopher Kastner told reporters on Monday ahead of the Surface Navy Association’s annual meeting in Crystal City, Virginia. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.
Outgoing Air Force secretary floats options for 6th-gen jet program. If the Trump administration decides not to build a new crewed combat jet, there are other options Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday. Audrey Decker limns them, here.
Insider-threat detectors fail too often. A new approach could help plug leaks. A team of Japanese researchers suggests a method for visualizing the flows of data and work in a “zero trust” system, which can help to adjust the monitoring and permission settings. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more, here.
Ukraine and Europe
North Koreans are blowing themselves up rather than face capture in Ukraine. There is “mounting evidence from the battlefield, intelligence reports and testimonies of defectors that some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures as they support Russia’s three-year war with Ukraine,” Reuters reports.
NATO chief: Ukraine is not currently strong enough to launch peace talks. “At this moment, clearly Ukraine is not there, because they cannot at this moment negotiate from a position of strength,” NATO Chief Mark Rutte told EU lawmakers on Monday. “We have to do more to make sure by changing the trajectory of the conflict that they can get to that position of strength.” AFP reports, here.
Related reading:
And lastly: NATO announced a new mission: protect Baltic Sea cables. Baltic Sentry will include frigates, maritime patrol aircraft and a fleet of naval drones to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.”
Rutte: “Across the alliance, we have seen elements of a campaign to destabilize our societies through cyberattacks, assassination attempts and sabotage, including possible sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea,” the NATO chief told reporters after a meeting in Helsinki with the leaders of Allied Baltic nations. (AP, Reuters)
Related: “Oil tanker sabotage crew were poised to cut more cables when caught, Finland says,” Reuters reports.
Read the full article here
