The full-court press from the political and media establishment to sink the nomination of Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense has reached a fever pitch, and if it is successful, it could doom other nominations as well.
President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet-in-waiting includes several nominees who hold heterodox beliefs and policy ideas that run contrary to the consensus that exists within the agencies they have been nominated to lead. It is for this reason that Trump has nominated Hegseth and others to lead the agencies of the federal government. He chose them with the expressed duty to shake up business as usual.
But it has hardly been smooth sailing. Already, a campaign to defeat Hegseth’s nomination has turned into a circus of media smears that evokes memories of the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. The press have gleefully published anonymous stories of licentiousness, even resorting to publishing an email from his own mother that was critical of his behavior. His mother has said she apologized to him for that email and is urging senators to support his nomination.
The cost of withdrawing Hegseth’s nomination is to validate this trial by media smears six years after the Senate repudiated the smear campaign against Kavanaugh. Withdrawing Hegseth’s nomination now would send the message that such smear campaigns can be effective again and will open the floodgates for similar efforts against Trump’s other nominees.
With Hegseth out of the way and emboldened by its successful effort to sink his nomination, the establishment will smell blood in the water and quickly turn to Trump’s other heterodox nominees. With Hegseth out of the way, entrenched interests will likely wage a strong campaign to sink the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Once it is clear that Kennedy does not have the votes for confirmation, FBI director nominee Kash Patel will be the next one to be smeared, as will former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the president-elect’s nominee to be the director of national intelligence.
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Trump was elected with a mandate to change business as usual in Washington, D.C. But he can’t change the way the government works if he does not have a Cabinet eager to execute his mandate, from the Pentagon to the FBI to HHS. To abandon Hegseth now would place that all in peril before he ever takes office.
If senators are uncomfortable with the president’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, they are welcome to vote against him on the Senate floor and make clear to the people who just elected Trump president that they will validate a dishonest smear campaign with no scruples.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
