Pete Hegseth faces 'big issues of character' at make-or-break Senate hearing
WASHINGTON ? Pete Hegseth, the combat veteran, former Fox News host and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, faces a Senate hearing Tuesday expected to center on his treatment of women and his temperament.
With their slight majority, Senate Republicans can afford few dissenting votes if Hegseth is to win approval. Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who leads the Armed Services Committee, has signaled that odds are good Hegseth will become the nation’s 29th secretary of defense.
Democrats have raised concerns about Hegseth’s fitness for the job. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s leading Democrat, met with Hegseth Jan. 8 and said he remained unconvinced Hegseth can handle the sprawling Pentagon and its national security mission.
The former "Fox & Friends" co-host is considered one of the most vulnerable of Trump's Cabinet nominees since former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew from consideration shortly after the president-elect chose him to run the Justice Department back in November.
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Hegseth was accused of sexual assault over a 2017 encounter he said was consensual, resulting in no criminal charges, and has been dogged by allegations of alcohol abuse.
“There’s big issues of character that have been raised about his conduct, which has to be considered,” Reed said in an interview.
“Finally, there's a fundamental issue of his allegiance to the Constitution, not to a political party or individual. And that has to be established beyond any doubt that his oath to the Constitution will preempt any personal loyalties,” Reed told USA TODAY.
Wicker met with Hegseth early last month to discuss his nomination and Wicker's foreign policy and defense priorities.
"I will continue to be supportive of the president-elect’s nominees," Wicker said in a news release. Wicker's office did not return a request for comment.
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Hegseth, 44, brings the resume of a media personality and director of nonprofit veterans groups to his job interview with the Senate Armed Services Committee.
His objective: chief executive officer of the $850-billion-a-year Defense Department. Senators have said they want answers from Hegseth about his comments regarding women in combat, allegations of sexual assault and reports of alcohol abuse.
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Nearly any of those factors probably would have scuttled the prospects of previous candidates to lead the Pentagon’s 2.3 million troops and civilians. For example, a report by USA TODAY in 2019 about his turbulent domestic life led then-acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan to resign.
Most defense secretaries, like Trump’s first, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, have been establishment figures chosen for their decades of experience in the military, government and private industry. Trump, this time, has chosen an outsider who shares his instinct for iconoclasm.
Trump cannot nominate Cabinet members until he takes office Jan. 20. That means Tuesday’s hearing will be to gather information, Reed said. A committee vote will not take place until after his nomination.
Trump's transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, senators will confront Hegseth about his past on a national stage.
Women in the military and accusations of assault
Hegseth has questioned – then backtracked on ? the role of women in combat, jobs opened to them for more than a decade. In all, women fill about 18% of the military’s ranks.
“It hasn't made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said of women on the front lines in a podcast Nov. 7.
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Female veterans and military experts hit back hard at Hegseth's comments. Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who served more than 25 years, said the military could face a recruitment crisis if it needed to refill all combat roles now held by women.
"If they decide to cut back on women, even in certain occupations only, they'd have to take a less qualified man and lower some of those standards just to recruit them," she said.
"You'd have to bring back the draft, I expect," she added.
Facing blowback, including from Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the Illinois Democrat who lost her legs in combat in Iraq, Hegseth retreated from that statement after being picked by Trump.
"We support all women serving in our military today who do a fantastic job across the globe, in our Pentagon, and deliver critical aspects, all aspects, combat included, and they have so for quite some time," Hegseth told reporters as he paid visits to senators on Capitol Hill.
Duckworth told reporters Friday that Hegseth is the "most unqualified nominee ever picked for this role."
A key Republican committee member, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, is also an Army combat veteran. She has not committed to supporting or rejecting Hegseth’s nomination.
On Jan. 6, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, an Armed Services Committee member, sent Hegseth a 33-page letter demanding answers to a variety of questions.
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The 2017 sexual assault allegation
His treatment of women was chief among them: “How many times have you been accused of sexually harassing or sexually assaulting another individual?” Warren asked in the letter. A disputed sexual encounter in 2017 involving Hegseth lies at the root of Warren’s question.
A woman claimed Hegseth sexually assaulted her in 2017 at a hotel in California, according to a report from the Monterey Police Department. The woman told police that she had hazy memories of the encounter but that she had repeated “no” and that Hegseth swiped away her phone and blocked the door with his body, according to police documents.
Hegseth told investigators that he was “buzzed” but not intoxicated at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa in Northern California before the incident, which he has said was consensual. The encounter led to a confidential monetary settlement with the woman, but no criminal charges.
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Hegseth's treatment of women also came into question after The New York Times published an email his mother wrote to him amid his divorce from his second wife, Samantha Deering.
"You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth," Penelope Hegseth wrote, accusing her son of "dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling" women. She later appeared on Fox News to defend him, saying her son is "not that man he was seven years ago."
Alcohol use
Hegseth’s use of alcohol, another target of questions by Warren, is likely to come up at Tuesday’s hearing as well.
In early December, Hegseth said he wouldn’t drink “a drop of alcohol” if he wins confirmation. He made the vow after numerous reports and accounts surfaced detailing a history of heavy drinking, often entangled with his work.
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A story in the New Yorker magazine cited a report by a whistleblower saying Hegseth was repeatedly intoxicated while running the nonprofit organization Concerned Veterans for America, including an incident in which he had to be carried out of one of the group’s events. Hegseth was pushed out of the group over his alcohol abuse on the job, according to three sources quoted in the story.
Six of Hegseth's former co-workers at Fox News told The Washington Post they saw Hegseth drink on the job or intoxicated at work events.
Hegseth has denied the report.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a committee member who has helped Hegseth prepare for the hearing, predicted that “Pete's going to do just fine."
"The guy's been in combat," Mullin said. "He's been shot at, he's heard rounds crack over the top of his head. He'll be composed and handle himself just fine."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hegseth faces 'big issues of character' at Senate hearing
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