HAS HEGSETH TURNED A CORNER? So far, President-elect Donald Trump has filled or named candidates for more than 60 top jobs in his coming administration. Of those who have to be confirmed by the Senate, one (attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz) has been withdrawn, while three others — defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, health and human services secretary nominee Robert Kennedy Jr., and national intelligence director nominee Tulsi Gabbard — face significant opposition. With 53 Republicans in the next Senate, plus the tiebreaking vote of Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Trump can afford to lose as many as three GOP senators and still confirm his nominees on a party-line vote. But if more than three Republicans oppose a nominee, that’s it, assuming unanimous Democratic opposition.
For a while, the Gaetz nomination got the most attention simply because Gaetz, besides his problems as a nominee, had alienated so many Republicans on Capitol Hill. The key moment in the nomination came when Trump determined that Gaetz did not have the votes for confirmation. Shortly after, Gaetz withdrew his name, and Trump quickly announced another nominee, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. The entire process took eight days, from the first announcement on Nov. 13 until Gaetz’s withdrawal on Nov. 21.
The Hegseth nomination has followed another path. Announced on Nov. 12, Hegseth has faced a series of drip-drip-drip allegations involving, first, an anonymous woman’s accusation that he raped her at a conference in California in 2017 and, second, various anonymous accusations that he got embarrassingly drunk on a number of occasions in the mid-2010s.
For weeks, Hegseth’s hopes appeared to be sinking with each new anonymous allegation. Many around Washington came to assume that Hegseth would not make it. Hegseth’s prospects were not helped by the fact that Trump stayed mostly silent on his nominee’s troubles. The president-elect could have issued statements of support anytime he wanted on Truth Social, his social network — but he didn’t. Washington then assumed, correctly, that Trump, while not pushing Hegseth out, was not going to spend political capital trying to save the nomination.
It became clear to everyone that if Hegseth wanted to save his nomination, he would have to do it himself. And that’s what he has begun trying to do. On Wednesday, Hegseth did an interview with popular podcaster and former Fox News colleague Megyn Kelly. He firmly denied the rape allegation. On drinking, he said, “First of all, I’ve never had a drinking problem. No one’s ever approached me and said, ‘You should really look at getting help for your drinking.’ Never, never sought counseling, never sought help, but I respect and appreciate people who do. But you know, what do guys do when they come back from war oftentimes? Have some beers. How do you deal with the demons you see on the battlefield? Sometimes it’s with a bottle. Unfortunately, tragically, for too many guys, it’s with the bottle and then it’s depression and, even worse, suicide. I mean, we’ve got an epidemic of that in our country. Thank God, by the grace of God, I found my chapters of purpose that pulled me out of that.”
The back-from-war beer drinking comments were an apparent reference to previous statements Hegseth has made about drinking. In August 2021, speaking on a podcast with another Fox News colleague, Will Cain, Hegseth described the time after he returned from service in Iraq. “I’d look around at 10 o’clock and be like, ‘What am I going to do today? How about I drink some beers? How about I go have some lunch and have some beers? How about I meet my one or two buddies and have some beers?’ And one beer leads to many, leads to self-medication, leads to ‘I’ve earned this.’ Like, ‘Don’t tell me I can’t.’” When Cain asked if Hegseth sometimes drank heavily, Hegseth said, “Oh, yeah.”
Hegseth’s comments to Kelly — his intimation that he had had a problem but pulled out of it, which echoed what he earlier said to Cain — bolstered the argument that he is now a “changed man.” In addition, Hegseth’s mother offered her own testimony to that effect. And then several of Hegseth’s Fox colleagues made statements, on the record, saying they had not seen the problems described in media accounts about him.
The Hegseth team made effective arguments that media reports, based mostly on anonymous sources, are biased against him and, more importantly, biased against the Trump agenda he would enact as secretary of defense. “It’s the classic art of the smear,” he told Kelly. “Take whatever tiny kernels of truth — and there are tiny, tiny ones in there — and blow them up in a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I’m definitely not.”
What Hegseth’s media pushback did was give Republicans something to hold on to, some material to use in Hegseth’s defense. And it bought him time. Hegseth slowed the accelerating narrative that his nomination was doomed. That doesn’t mean he will survive, but it does mean he will survive long enough to further defend himself.
Hegseth’s counteroffensive also included pressure on possibly wavering Senate Republicans. Specifically, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a member of the Armed Services Committee who has declined to express support for Hegseth, is facing criticism from Trump supporters both in her home state and on social media. Some in Iowa have talked of a primary challenge. A recent article by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, while not mentioning Ernst by name, condemned “DC politicians” who “think they can ignore the voices of their constituents and entertain smears from the same outlets that have pushed out lies for years.” On Twitter, Donald Trump Jr. wrote, “If you’re a GOP senator who voted for Lloyd Austin but criticize Pete Hegseth then maybe you’re in the wrong political party!” Ernst was one of the overwhelming majority of Republicans who voted to confirm Austin, the Biden administration’s secretary of defense.
With his strategy on Wednesday and Thursday, Hegseth managed to change the tone of the discussion among Republicans. And sure enough, on Friday morning, Trump took notice, breaking his silence to write, “Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe…Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”
After that came expressions of support from Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who will be the next White House press secretary, that Trump “stands by [Hegseth] 100 percent.” And then Vance said, “I fully support Pete. I think Pete’s going to get confirmed, and we are completely behind him.”
Did Hegseth turn the tide on his nomination? It’s too early to say that. There is a strong possibility he will, in the end, not win confirmation. But at the beginning of this week, Hegseth was facing a desperate situation, what seemed like sure defeat, and now he has given himself a chance. The president-elect’s stance made it pretty clear to Hegseth that if his nomination were to be saved, Hegseth would have to save it himself. And Hegseth has made a start on doing just that.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
