Pete Hegseth sur­vives anoth­er day with Cab­i­net nom­i­na­tion on shaky ground

Speak­ing to reporters in between meet­ings on Capi­tol Hill, Hegseth vowed not to with­draw his name from con­sid­er­a­tion and said that Trump is still sup­port­ing his nom­i­na­tion. 

“I spoke to the pres­i­dent this morn­ing. He sup­ports me ful­ly. We’re not going any­where,” Hegseth said leav­ing a meet­ing with incom­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader John Thune (R‑SD). 

Vice Pres­i­dent-elect J.D. Vance, who was also at the Capi­tol vis­it­ing with sen­a­tors, urged his for­mer col­leagues to hold a “fair hear­ing” for Hegseth.

“I think Pete Hegseth deserves a fair hear­ing by the Sen­ate, not a sham hear­ing from the Amer­i­can media,” Vance told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er. 

Hegseth already had been fac­ing accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al assault stem­ming from a 2017 inci­dent that he said was con­sen­su­al. How­ev­er, in the last 72 hours, fresh alle­ga­tions came to light involv­ing alco­hol abuse, as well as an email from his moth­er in which she said her son “belit­tles, lies, cheats, sleeps around.”

Pene­lope Hegseth acknowl­edged send­ing the email to her son dur­ing his 2018 divorce in an inter­view on Fox News but said it was at a time of “deep emo­tion” and that she sent an apol­o­gy email two hours lat­er. 

“He’s redeemed, for­giv­en, changed. I think we all are after sev­en years,” she said in the inter­view. 

Doubts about whether Hegseth could have the nec­es­sary sup­port to be con­firmed grew more appar­ent fol­low­ing reports that Trump has begun float­ing back­up nom­i­nees such as Gov. Ron DeSan­tis (R‑FL). 

“It’s not 100% clear to me who he wants as his sec­re­tary of defense right now,” said Sen. Josh Haw­ley (R‑MO), speak­ing to reporters on Wednes­day.

In an inter­view with Meg­yn Kel­ly on Sir­iusXM radio, Hegseth dis­missed the alle­ga­tions against him as lies cre­at­ed by ene­mies of Trump, com­par­ing it to accu­sa­tions against Jus­tice Brett Kavanaugh dur­ing his Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings. 

“It is the clas­sic art of the smear,” Hegseth said. “Take what­ev­er tiny ker­nels of truth — and there are tiny, tiny ones in there — and blow them up into a mas­quer­ade of a nar­ra­tive about some­body that I am def­i­nite­ly not.”

He made a sim­i­lar case in an op-ed in the Wall Street Jour­nal on Wednes­day, writ­ing that “I look for­ward to an hon­est con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing with our dis­tin­guished sen­a­tors — not a show tri­al in the press.”

Thune refused to pre­dict whether Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion will make it through the Sen­ate, but said “he artic­u­lates a good vision, a strong vision for the Depart­ment of Defense.”

“He’s obvi­ous­ly an expe­ri­enced vet­er­an, com­bat vet­er­an, so he brings a lot of expe­ri­ence about what the warfight­ers’ needs are and how to keep Amer­i­ca ready for the poten­tial bat­tles of the future,” Thune said.

Sen. Roger Wick­er (R‑MS), the incom­ing chair­man of the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, said Hegseth told him in a Wednes­day morn­ing meet­ing that he won’t drink if he’s con­firmed.

“I think that’s prob­a­bly a good idea,” Wick­er said, telling the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er that he thought Hegseth should not with­draw his nom­i­na­tion.

While many Repub­li­can sen­a­tors won’t open­ly admit Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion is in a pre­car­i­ous place, most agree that Hegseth has explain­ing to do.

“I would like to hear from him about many of the alle­ga­tions that you all have been report­ing. So, yeah, I have a lot of ques­tions,” said Sen. Lisa Murkows­ki (R‑AK), a crit­i­cal swing vote. 

Sen. Susan Collins (R‑ME), anoth­er cen­trist sen­a­tor, said she plans on meet­ing with Hegseth “prob­a­bly next week.”

“I have a lot of ques­tions both in defense pol­i­cy and else­where,” Collins told reporters.

Sev­er­al GOP sen­a­tors have called the alle­ga­tions against Hegseth “seri­ous” but have also empha­sized he deserves a chance to prove him­self.

“The alle­ga­tions are very, very seri­ous. They can’t be triv­i­al­ized,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R‑ND). “I just want to know if he’s going to be redeemed and if going for­ward he’s going to be bet­ter.”

“I think the mood of the con­fer­ence is they are pret­ty seri­ous, seri­ous about it and seri­ous about how these things affect his abil­i­ty to do the job, the abil­i­ty of the troops to look up to him,” Cramer added, while also stress­ing he believes Hegseth at the helm of the Pen­ta­gon would be a “breath of fresh air.”

Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham (R‑SC) denied accu­sa­tions from allies with­in Trump’s orbit that he is work­ing along­side Sen. Joni Ernst (R‑IA) to sink Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion. Ernst is thought to be among the pos­si­ble replace­ments for Hegseth should his nom­i­na­tion fall through.

“Peo­ple say a lot of things. I don’t know what they are talk­ing about. I like Pete, I’ve known him a long time. You know the alle­ga­tions he’s gonna have to address,” Gra­ham told reporters.

Hegseth also denied that he was going to meet with Trump on Thurs­day, as was report­ed ear­li­er in the day.

A major test for Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion came on Wednes­day when he met with Ernst, a com­bat vet­er­an who has been vocal about being sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her­self. She is also an advo­cate of pre­vent­ing mil­i­tary sex­u­al assault and has spon­sored bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion to hold per­pe­tra­tors account­able. The Iowa Repub­li­can did not tip her hand as to how she’d vote fol­low­ing her meet­ing.

“It was a very frank and thor­ough con­ver­sa­tion,” she said, while also declin­ing to answer ques­tions about her name being float­ed to replace Hegseth.

Sen. Mike Braun (R‑IN), who is leav­ing at the end of the year to become the gov­er­nor of Indi­ana, admit­ted that it would be dif­fi­cult for Hegseth to address the loom­ing prob­lem of sex­u­al assault in the mil­i­tary when he’s faced sim­i­lar alle­ga­tions him­self.

“That would be dif­fi­cult, maybe, kind of try­ing to get through some­thing like that when that’s the main thing that’s com­ing at you,” Braun said. 

Some of Trump’s allies on Capi­tol Hill pri­vate­ly acknowl­edged they feared Trump’s dis­cus­sions with DeSan­tis had giv­en Repub­li­cans more flex­i­bil­i­ty to crit­i­cize and ques­tion Hegseth’s via­bil­i­ty. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans ini­tial­ly sig­naled that Hegseth had a path to con­fir­ma­tion, down­play­ing the reports of sex­u­al assault. 

The sit­u­a­tion appears to have changed fol­low­ing the lat­est report­ing, with sen­a­tors offer­ing a more mea­sured assess­ment of his nom­i­na­tion.

“I don’t like to give up on stuff, but some­times when you’re climb­ing a moun­tain so steep you’re going to prob­a­bly slide back. In this case, it looks like Pete’s going to per­sist, but you nev­er know when some­thing does go a dif­fer­ent direc­tion,” Braun said.

Trump can only afford three defec­tions with­in the Sen­ate Repub­li­can con­fer­ence to get his picks con­firmed, as the GOP will hold a 53-seat major­i­ty come Jan­u­ary. One of Trump’s picks, for­mer Rep. Matt Gaetz (R‑FL), who was nom­i­nat­ed to become attor­ney gen­er­al, with­drew from con­sid­er­a­tion after Sen­ate Repub­li­cans expressed con­cerns. Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Chro­nis­ter was also nom­i­nat­ed to serve as head of the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion but with­drew from con­sid­er­a­tion ear­li­er this week.

Sen­ate Democ­rats are tak­ing a vic­to­ry lap, with some already con­sid­er­ing Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion to be “doomed.”

“I would be very sur­prised if we are still talk­ing about Pete Hegseth next Mon­day, even by the end of the week,” said Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal (D‑CT). 

“I’ve talked to five to 10 Repub­li­cans who have said to me they are just wait­ing for the right moment to say ‘no’ to Pete Hegseth,” he added.

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Oth­ers, such as Sen. Mark Kel­ly (D‑AZ), said he’d be more inclined to sup­port DeSan­tis to become head of the Depart­ment of Defense, if he should be nom­i­nat­ed to replace Hegseth.

“He’s a gov­er­nor of one of our biggest states, he served in Con­gress, he served in the mil­i­tary, he has what you would look at on paper as the req­ui­site kind of expe­ri­ence you’d want in a sec­re­tary of defense,” Kel­ly said.