Net­works Cheer ‘Trou­bling’ ‘New Alle­ga­tions’ Try­ing to Sink Pete Hegseth

With Matt Gaetz hav­ing stepped down from attor­ney gen­er­al con­sid­er­a­tion almost two weeks ago, the lib­er­al media have turned their ire toward dec­o­rat­ed Army vet­er­an, best-sell­ing mil­i­tary author, and for­mer Fox News host Pete Hegseth.

On Tues­day, they gid­di­ly passed along the “trou­bling” “new alle­ga­tions” against him, includ­ing those ped­dled by far-left smear mer­chant Jane May­er of The New York­er (which they trum­pet­ed as gospel) ludi­crous­ly paint­ing Hegseth as a dan­ger to women and our tax dol­lars.

CBS Morn­ings hailed from the get-go. In the Eye Open­er, fea­tured co-host Vladimir Duthiers ped­dled the “[n]ew alle­ga­tions of drink­ing and sex­u­al mis­con­duct against Don­ald Trump’s pick for defense sec­re­tary, Pete Hegseth.”

Co-host and Demo­c­ra­t­ic donor Gayle King had the “trou­bling” line and shared the CBS at least “con­firmed Pete Hegseth was forced to step down from a vet­er­ans’ non­prof­it after being accused of alco­hol abuse, sex­u­al mis­con­duct and mis­man­ag­ing the group’s mon­ey.”

Chief White House cor­re­spon­dent Nan­cy Cordes had quite the approach to Hegseth, tak­ing a con­de­scend­ing tone:

Gross. CBS’s Nan­cy Cordes all but mocks @PeteHegseth fac­ing alle­ga­tions of drink­ing and finan­cial mis­man­ag­ment…

“Hegseth has been tapped by the Pres­i­dent-Elect to run one of the largest bureau­cra­cies in the world, the U.S. mil­i­tary, and yet, CBS News has con­firmed now that he… pic.twitter.com/zSt7UCwcKl

— Cur­tis Houck (@CurtisHouck) Decem­ber 3, 2024

After air­ing a clip of con­gres­sion­al cor­re­spon­dent Nikole Kil­lion chas­ing down Hegseth and ask­ing him about being “drunk…on the job” and Hegseth scoff­ing he wouldn’t “dig­ni­fy that with a response,” Cordes seemed to play up com­ments from Sen­a­tor Cyn­thia Lum­mis (R‑WY) as a way to mock the GOP and play up the alle­ga­tions.

ABC’s Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca found time for this as part of their Trump-hat­ing agen­da, but not a sec­ond for the con­tin­ued blow­back over Pres­i­dent Biden lying to the Amer­i­can peo­ple by decid­ing to par­don son Hunter.

Trump-hat­ing cor­re­spon­dent Rachel Scott boast­ed “these new alle­ga­tions” — which took over a minute to dis­close — “could set the stage for a bruis­ing con­fir­ma­tion bat­tle.”

After sum­ma­riz­ing attor­ney gen­er­al pick Pat Bondi’s trip to the Capi­tol, she turned to Hegseth, tout­ing Mayer’s piece despite the admis­sion ABC hasn’t con­firmed its valid­i­ty or a sep­a­rate-but-also-gross New York Times piece:

ABC’s Trump-hat­ing cor­re­spon­dent @RachelVScott on ‘Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca’ smear­ing @PeteHegseth:

“But Pete Hegseth is fend­ing off alle­ga­tions of finan­cial mis­man­age­ment and sex­u­al mis­con­duct which he denies. Accord­ing to The New York­er, Hegseth was forced to step down from… pic.twitter.com/YRqKidaVr9

— Cur­tis Houck (@CurtisHouck) Decem­ber 3, 2024

NBC’s Today spent only 63 sec­onds on the con­fir­ma­tion hub­bub, and even less on Hegseth. Cap­i­tal Hill cor­re­spon­dent Gar­rett Haake boast­ed Hegseth won’t face “a fair­ly easy path to con­fir­ma­tion” like Bon­di, who “lack[s]…any seri­ous scan­dal[.]”

Haake tout­ed “the steady drip of reports about per­son­al issues around him relat­ed to alleged drink­ing or mis­man­age­ment of funds at pre­vi­ous jobs, alleged mis­treat­ment of women” as a mill­stone as if they just organ­i­cal­ly came out of the wood­work instead of a coor­di­nat­ed smear cam­paign.

After admit­ting he’s “denied” “some of” the claims, Haake said he will have “a lot of tough ques­tions answer to lock down sup­port from Repub­li­cans that he’ll need.”

To see the rel­e­vant tran­scripts from Decem­ber 3, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).