Today, the Senate will begin a busy week of hearings to consider President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to fill out his Cabinet. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, will be the first of 13 nominees set to go before the Senate this week.
Questions at Hegseth’s hearing are likely to focus on his views about women serving in combat roles, his plans to reorient the military’s warfighting focus, as well as allegations he sexually assaulted a woman and has a drinking problem.
In a Nov. 7 interview with podcast host and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan, Hegseth said the U.S. military’s run with women in combat arms roles, thus far, “Hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.”
In an interview with Megyn Kelly last month, Hegseth insisted his opposition is not to women serving in combat, but to the military lowering its standards to make it so.
“If we have the right standard and women meet that standard, roger let’s go,” he said. “If they can’t—and that’s a product of physical differences because the standard’s high—then that’s just the reality.”
Addressing the alcohol allegations, Hegseth has denied he has a problem and insisted he, a former infantry officer who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, would treat the job of defense secretary like a combat deployment: fully sober.
“I need to make sure the senators, and the troops, and President Trump, and everybody else knows, when you call me 24/7 you’re getting fully dialed-in Pete just like you always did in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he told Kelly.
The drinking concerns dovetail with an allegation that Hegseth sexually assaulted a woman in 2017, while having an affair behind his wife’s back. As a married man, Hegseth has said he was wrong to become involved with another woman, but insisted the encounter was entirely consensual.
Hegseth may still face an uphill battle convincing senators he’s the right person to lead the Pentagon.
Seven Senate Democrats authored a Dec. 17 letter declaring Hegseth’s views on women in combat, and the sexual assault allegations, to be disqualifying.
It’s also unclear how Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) will vote on Hegseth’s nomination. He’s met with both lawmakers in recent weeks, in an effort to win them over.
In an interview with Maine’s WMTW broadcaster last month, Collins said she focused on Hegseth’s views of women in combat, and the sexual assault allegation during their meeting.
“I have been insistent on an FBI background check, that in his case can investigate and probe the allegations that have been made against him,” Collins said.
So far, Trump has stood by his Pentagon pick. In a Dec. 6 post on his Truth social media page, the president-elect said Hegseth is doing well and enjoys strong support, “much more so than the Fake News would have you believe.”
Hegseth has said Trump has called on him to “clean out all the social justice and politically correct garbage” in the military and “get back to lethality, war-fighting, accountability, meritocracy, and readiness.”
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–-Stacy Robinson
