TOTAL WAR: The Regime and Its Media Have Come For SECDEF-Des­ig­nate Pete Hegseth

As the Regime Media array them­selves against the Trump Cab­i­net, it has become crys­tal clear that Defense Sec­re­tary-Des­ig­nate Pete Hegseth has become a prime tar­get. With the Hunter Biden par­don rapid­ly fad­ing from cov­er­age, the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion attacks against Hegseth drew top billing.

The most over-the-top cov­er­age of Hegseth comes via the CBS Evening News. Out­go­ing anchor Norah O’Donnell’s wild intro­duc­tion was tonal­ly more in line with what you’d expect towards the end of a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Heck, it could’ve eas­i­ly been pub­lished as a cam­paign press release:

NORAH O’DONNELL: Good evening. I’m Norah O’Don­nell and we begin with new report­ing tonight by CBS News. The high­est pri­or­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. As the Com­man­der-in-Chief, pres­i­dents rely on their defense sec­re­taries to help car­ry out that solemn task. Pres­i­dent-Elect Don­ald Trump want­ed a Fox News week­end host to hold that post. The 44-year-old com­bat vet­er­an, Pete Hegseth. But tonight that nom­i­na­tion appears to be on the rocks. Hegseth is fac­ing new alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and exces­sive drink­ing. Tonight, CBS News has learned Hegseth may not have the sup­port of enough Repub­li­can sen­a­tors to be con­firmed for the job, mean­ing his nom­i­na­tion is in seri­ous jeop­ardy.

O’Donnell’s intro feeds into a Nikole Kil­lion report which served sev­er­al pur­pos­es: to present Hegseth as unqual­i­fied for the posi­tion of Sec­re­tary of Defense (the insis­tence on describ­ing him pri­mar­i­ly as “Fox News host” and not as a dec­o­rat­ed com­bat vet­er­an), and to retail the var­i­ous sets of alle­ga­tions that have been made against Hegseth. With­out evi­dence. More on that in a bit.

After Killion’s video pack­age, O’Donnell toss­es to incom­ing co-anchor John Dick­er­son, who fur­ther rein­forces the cre­den­tial­ist dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion nar­ra­tive against Hegseth (click “expand” to view tran­script):

Norah O’Don­nell brought in the ever-pompous John Dick­er­son (one of her replace­ments) to to cite anony­mous FORMER Pen­ta­gon offi­cials…

O’Don­nell: “[L]et’s talk about the Defense Depart­ment. As you know, it’s Amer­i­ca’s largest gov­ern­ment agency. The defense sec­re­tary over­sees… pic.twitter.com/f7355IAlwh

— Cur­tis Houck (@CurtisHouck) Decem­ber 4, 2024

O’DONNELL: Let’s talk about the Defense Depart­ment. As you know, it’s Amer­i­ca’s largest gov­ern­ment agency. The Defense Sec­re­tary over­sees some 3 mil­lion mil­i­tary and civil­ian employ­ees. We’re talk­ing about a near­ly $1 tril­lion bud­get. What is this process that’s going on? Tell us about the grow­ing doubts around Pete Hegseth.

JOHN DICKERSON: Well, Norah, in prepa­ra­tion for our con­ver­sa­tion, I talked to some for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cials, high-rank­ing offi­cials. And they say, obvi­ous­ly, the char­ac­ter ques­tions go to trust. And this is a job of extra­or­di­nary respon­si­bil­i­ty. But also this is a job that requires bal­ance and restraint. But what they all focused on was just what the job requires. It’s to give the pres­i­dent advice on using lethal force. And it’s a com­pli­cat­ed world. You’ve got wars in the Mid­dle East, Ukraine. You’ve got Chi­na, and Rus­sia ris­ing and there are sur­pris­es like what’s hap­pen­ing in South Korea. And then there’s the fact that a Pen­ta­gon Defense Sec­re­tary has to think about 2050 as much as 2025. That means arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, super­com­put­ing, and war­fare in space. Then Don­ald Trump is mak­ing a com­plex job even more so for his Defense Sec­re­tary by adding on pos­si­bly round­ing up migrants. Also he wants to take huge sec­tions of Pen­ta­gon staff away. And he wants to rewire some U.S. alliances. So this is a very dif­fi­cult job that Don­ald Trump is going to make even more com­plex.

ABC and NBC’s reports were tame in com­par­i­son, even if they fol­lowed the same gen­er­al con­tours as CBS’s wild report. There were the “Fox News host” ref­er­ences, the anony­mous­ly-sourced reports alleg­ing wild behav­ior, and the whis­pered spec­u­la­tion that there might not be suf­fi­cient Repub­li­can votes in the Sen­ate to con­firm Hegseth. It should be not­ed that only Gar­rett Haake of NBC News referred to Hegseth as a “dec­o­rat­ed com­bat veteran”-after ask­ing him whether he had a drink­ing prob­lem.

What we are watch­ing unfold in real time is noth­ing less than the Kav­abork­ing of Pete Hegseth. On the one hand, there is the drip-drip-drip of unsourced alle­ga­tions of exces­sive alco­hol con­sump­tion and sex­u­al impro­pri­ety, sim­i­lar to what we saw dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of Jus­tice Brett Kavanaugh to the Unit­ed States Supreme Court.

On the oth­er, the fero­cious ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tion to the nom­i­nee. In per­form­ing his cre­den­tial­ist dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion attack, CBS’s John Dick­er­son revealed the TRUE objec­tion to Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion, which is that he isn’t a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the D.C. Blob. 

The social behav­ior would be much less of an issue were Hegseth a retired four-star gen­er­al or con­gress­man, and on the board of some large DoD con­trac­tor. He’d just slide right in after a quick con­fir­ma­tion, and con­tin­ue to sup­port the proxy wars in Ukraine and every­where else. But he isn’t, so it’s ALL going to be a prob­lem. 

As a reform out­sider, Hegseth is going to draw sig­nif­i­cant resis­tance. Going for­ward, expect the Regime Media to con­tin­ue to cov­er this nom­i­na­tion as the threat that it is.  

Click “expand” to view the full tran­scripts of the afore­men­tioned reports as aired on their respec­tive net­work news­casts on Tues­day, Decem­ber 3rd, 2024:

ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT

12/3/24

6:38 PM

DAVID MUIR: Mean­time, on Capi­tol Hill tonight, Pres­i­dent-Elect Don­ald Trump’s pick to lead the Pen­ta­gon fac­ing tough new ques­tions and tonight, a key trump ally on The Hill now acknowl­edg­ing this will be a, quote, “dif­fi­cult path to con­fir­ma­tion” for Pete Hegseth. Here’s ABC’s Mary Bruce.

MARY BRUCE: Tonight, Don­ald Trump’s embat­tled pick to lead the Defense Depart­ment, for­mer Fox News host Pete Hegseth, swarmed on Capi­tol Hill as he faces a bruis­ing con­fir­ma­tion process.

REPORTER: How con­fi­dent are you that you can get the votes to be con­firmed?

BRUCE: Hegseth mak­ing the rounds hand-in-hand with his wife, try­ing to shore up sup­port as he fends off alle­ga­tions of finan­cial mis­man­age­ment, sex­u­al mis­con­duct and alco­hol abuse, which he denies.

REPORTER: What do you say to peo­ple who are trou­bled by some of these alle­ga­tions, sir?

BRUCE: The New York­er report­ing Hegseth was forced to step down from lead­ing two con­ser­v­a­tive vet­er­ans’ groups in the face of accu­sa­tions he mis­han­dled funds and abused alco­hol on the job. Alleged­ly sex­u­al­ly pur­su­ing female staffers and repeat­ed­ly being so drunk that he had to be cared for by employ­ees, includ­ing once when he had to be held back “from join­ing the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club where he had brought his team,” accord­ing to a whistle­blow­er report obtained by the mag­a­zine. Hegseth, an Army vet­er­an with no mil­i­tary lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence, also fac­ing ques­tions about his pre­vi­ous insis­tence that women should­n’t serve in com­bat roles.

PETE HEGSETH: I’m straight up just say­ing we should not have women in com­bat roles.

BRUCE: Today asked if he still feels that way.

REPORTER: How do you feel about the women in com­bat?

HEGSETH: We have amaz­ing women who serve in our mil­i­tary. Amaz­ing women who serve in our mil­i­tary.

REPORTER: Do you think that they should be in com­bat?

HEGSETH: I think they’re already in com­bat.

BRUCE: Despite the back­lash, the Trump team tonight remains con­fi­dent.

JASON MILLER: So when it comes to Pete Hegseth, there aren’t any con­cerns and we feel very good about his posi­tion­ing for being con­firmed by the Sen­ate.

BRUCE: But he will need a major­i­ty of sup­port in the Sen­ate to be con­firmed. And even some of Trump’s ardent sup­port­ers con­cede he faces an uphill bat­tle.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Some of these arti­cles are very dis­turb­ing. He obvi­ous­ly has a chance to defend him­self here, but you know, some of this stuff is — it’s going to be dif­fi­cult.

JOSH HAWLEY: I would just urge them before they make up their minds, let them have his hear­ing and lis­ten to him under oath.

BRUCE: And David, Hegseth will sure­ly have to face tough ques­tions from sen­a­tors on both sides of the aisle. He can only afford to lose the sup­port of three Repub­li­cans and still get the job. And already, one of Trump’s picks, for­mer Con­gress­man Matt Gaetz, did­n’t sur­vive the scruti­ny. And tonight, anoth­er one of Trump’s choic­es, this time to lead the DEA, Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Chro­nis­ter, with­draw­ing his name from con­sid­er­a­tion after he faced sig­nif­i­cant push­back from some of Don­ald Trump’s most ardent sup­port­ers, David.

MUIR: Mary Bruce with us tonight. Mary, thank you.

CBS EVENING NEWS

12/3/24

6:30 PM

NORAH O’DONNELL: Good evening. I’m Norah O’Don­nell and we begin with new report­ing tonight by CBS News. The high­est pri­or­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. As the Com­man­der-in-Chief, pres­i­dents rely on their defense sec­re­taries to help car­ry out that solemn task. Pres­i­dent-Elect Don­ald Trump want­ed a Fox News week­end host to hold that post. The 44-year-old com­bat vet­er­an, Pete Hegseth. But tonight that nom­i­na­tion appears to be on the rocks. Hegseth is fac­ing new alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and exces­sive drink­ing. Tonight, CBS News has learned Hegseth may not have the sup­port of enough Repub­li­can sen­a­tors to be con­firmed for the job, mean­ing his nom­i­na­tion is in seri­ous jeop­ardy. CBS’s Nikole Kil­lion leads off our cov­er­age tonight with new report­ing from Capi­tol Hill. Good evening, Nikole.

NIKOLE KILLION: Good evening, Norah. Sources tell CBS News at least four Repub­li­can sen­a­tors would like­ly with­hold their sup­port for Pete Hegseth if a con­fir­ma­tion vote were held today, although he and his team tell me they con­tin­ue to go through the process to answer law­mak­ers’ ques­tions. Defense Sec­re­tary-Des­ig­nate Pete Hegseth con­tin­ued to make the rounds on Capi­tol Hill today seek­ing sup­port. 

KILLION: What is your mes­sage to sen­a­tors while you’re here?

PETE HEGSETH: I wel­come their advice.

KILLION: But top Repub­li­cans are now voic­ing con­cerns about the 44-year-old for­mer Fox News host who was forced to step down as head of that non­prof­it Con­cerned Vet­er­ans for Amer­i­ca in 2016, after staffers accused him of finan­cial mis­man­age­ment, sex­u­al mis­con­duct, and repeat­ed intox­i­ca­tion. A lawyer for Hegseth has denied the alle­ga­tions.

CYNTHIA LUMMIS: These alle­ga­tions that have come up in just the last, oh, 12 to 14 hours are a sur­prise to all of us. And so yes, he does need to address those. Because this was not some­thing of which we were aware. Nor was Pres­i­dent Trump aware of them.

KILLION: The Pres­i­dent-Elec­t’s team was also not aware of all the details sur­round­ing a sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tion against Hegseth at a Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia, hotel in 2017. He has denied any wrong­do­ing and was not charged but lat­er paid the woman an undis­closed amount. 

Did you brief the Trump team at all about any of the alle­ga­tions against you, sir? 

Today, Hegseth also declined to elab­o­rate on the 2018 email his moth­er sent him, alleg­ing his mis­treat­ment of women. Accord­ing to the email pub­lished by The New York Times, Hegseth’s moth­er wrote, “You are an abuser of women. That is the ugly truth, and I have no respect for any man that belit­tles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own pow­er and ego.” 

Can you describe the rela­tion­ship with your moth­er?

HEGSETH: I love my moth­er.

KILLION: Hegseth’s moth­er lat­er told the Times she wrote the email in anger, and her words weren’t true. But South Car­oli­na Repub­li­can Lind­sey Gra­ham today said Hegseth has a chal­leng­ing road ahead.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Some of these arti­cles are very dis­turb­ing. He obvi­ous­ly has a chance to defend him­self here, some of this stuff is going to be dif­fi­cult. Time will tell. I like Pete. I’ve known him for a very, very long time.

KILLION: Tonight we have learned that the Jus­tice Depart­ment has signed an agree­ment with the Trump tran­si­tion team to allow some poten­tial nom­i­nees to under­go FBI back­ground checks, which means that their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ries would be reviewed. Norah.

O’DONNELL: Nikole Kil­lion with that new report­ing from Capi­tol Hill. Nikole, thank you. Let’s bring in our chief polit­i­cal ana­lyst, John Dick­er­son. John, let’s talk about the Defense Depart­ment. As you know, it’s Amer­i­ca’s largest gov­ern­ment agency. The Defense Sec­re­tary over­sees some 3 mil­lion mil­i­tary and civil­ian employ­ees. We’re talk­ing about a near­ly $1 tril­lion bud­get. What is this process that’s going on? Tell us about the grow­ing doubts around Pete Hegseth.

JOHN DICKERSON: Well, Norah, in prepa­ra­tion for our con­ver­sa­tion, I talked to some for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cials, high-rank­ing offi­cials. And they say, obvi­ous­ly, the char­ac­ter ques­tions go to trust. And this is a job of extra­or­di­nary respon­si­bil­i­ty. But also this is a job that requires bal­ance and restraint. But what they all focused on was just what the job requires. It’s to give the pres­i­dent advice on using lethal force. And it’s a com­pli­cat­ed world. You’ve got wars in the Mid­dle East, Ukraine. You’ve got Chi­na, and Rus­sia ris­ing and there are sur­pris­es like what’s hap­pen­ing in South Korea. And then there’s the fact that a Pen­ta­gon Defense Sec­re­tary has to think about 2050 as much as 2025. That means arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, super­com­put­ing, and war­fare in space. Then Don­ald Trump is mak­ing a com­plex job even more so for his Defense Sec­re­tary by adding on pos­si­bly round­ing up migrants. Also he wants to take huge sec­tions of Pen­ta­gon staff away. And he wants to rewire some U.S. alliances. So this is a very dif­fi­cult job that Don­ald Trump is going to make even more com­plex.

O’DONNELL: It’s a real­ly impor­tant point. And then, what about that new report­ing about these poten­tial FBI checks for those Trump nom­i­na­tions?

DICKERSON: One is just logis­ti­cal. It makes the tran­si­tion eas­i­er. It means that peo­ple have got­ten back­ground checks so they can see sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion. As far as nom­i­na­tion goes, it makes it so that the infor­ma­tion is not hearsay but has actu­al­ly been looked into. That might be good for some nom­i­nees but some oth­er nom­i­nees may not want G‑men look­ing into their back­grounds.

O’DONNELL: All right. John Dick­er­son, thank you.

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

12/3/24

6:36 PM

LESTER HOLT: Tonight there are new warn­ing signs that Pete Hegseth’s path to nom­i­na­tion as Defense Sec­re­tary may be in jeop­ardy with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans. It comes as we have new report­ing involv­ing alle­ga­tions about his drink­ing from for­mer col­leagues at Fox News. Claims the Trump tran­si­tion team is strong­ly deny­ing tonight. Gar­rett Haake now with late details.

GARRETT HAAKE: Tonight Pres­i­dent-Elect Don­ald Trump’s pick for Defense Sec­re­tary, Pete Hegseth, fac­ing grow­ing skep­ti­cism of his chances for con­fir­ma­tion amid dam­ag­ing news reports.

Do you need to address the ques­tions about your char­ac­ter that have been raised –

And now ten cur­rent and for­mer Fox News employ­ees who worked with Hegseth, who host­ed one of the network’s morn­ing shows, telling NBC News that he drank in ways that con­cerned them. Two say­ing that on more than a dozen occa­sions they smelled alco­hol on him before he went on air. Quote: “every­one would be talk­ing about it behind the scenes”, one of the for­mer Fox News employ­ees said. “He should not be Sec­re­tary of Defense”, anoth­er for­mer Fox News employ­ee said. “His drink­ing should be dis­qual­i­fy­ing.” A Trump tran­si­tion spokesper­son call­ing the alle­ga­tions “dis­gust­ing, com­plete­ly unfound­ed, and false.” An attor­ney for Hegseth refer­ring us to the tran­si­tion state­ment. Fox News did not respond. 

Mr. Hegseth, so many of these sto­ries about you have involved alco­hol. Do you have a drink­ing prob­lem, sir? 

Now NBC News has learned as many as six GOP sen­a­tors are not com­fort­able sup­port­ing Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple Repub­li­cans with direct knowl­edge of the nom­i­na­tion process. Hegseth can only afford to lose the sup­port of three Repub­li­cans if all Democ­rats vote no.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: The arti­cles I’ve read…

HAAKE: Yeah?

GRAHAM: Some of them are con­cern­ing. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But he’ll go through the process. He’ll be asked about it, we’ll see what hap­pens.

ROGER WICKER: There are ques­tions that some mem­bers have, and we’re going to be work­ing for an answer.

HAAKE: Are you among the mem­bers who have ques­tions?

WICKER: I’m look­ing to be sup­port­ive.

HAAKE: But no Repub­li­can sen­a­tor has pub­licly said they will oppose Hegseth, who’s also a dec­o­rat­ed com­bat vet­er­an.

MIKE ROUNDS: I think they’ve got a real­ly good — I think they’ve got a good shot of get­ting them all through.

HAAKE: Mean­while, late tonight, anoth­er Trump pick abrupt­ly pulled his name from con­sid­er­a­tion. Chad Chro­nis­ter, the sher­iff in Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty, Flori­da, with­draw­ing his selec­tion for Admin­is­tra­tor of the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion post­ing, quote, “Over the past sev­er­al days, as the grav­i­ty of this very impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ty set in, I’ve con­clud­ed that I must respect­ful­ly with­draw from con­sid­er­a­tion.”

HOLT: And, Gar­rett, the Trump team has also now reached an agree­ment with the Jus­tice Depart­ment for an FBI back­ground check of nom­i­nees.

HAAKE: Yeah, that’s right, Lester. It’s called a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing. And some Repub­li­can sen­a­tors have been urg­ing the Trump tran­si­tion to sign, wor­ried that not get­ting checks done in a time­ly fash­ion could delay con­fir­ma­tions or lead to unwel­come sur­pris­es just before hear­ings get start­ed. Lester.

HOLT: Gar­rett Haake. Thank you.