How Right Wingers Rushed to DEI Hire Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth is wildly unqualified to run DOD. He described yesterday the most people he had ever supervised was 100. The non-profit budgets that went broke under his stewardship were in the $10 million range. He has never supervised an audit yet claims he’ll be the guy who finally ensures the Pentagon passes one.
Roger Wicker seemed certain that Hegseth wasn’t man enough to withstand a second round of questioning — a concession that Hegseth is weaker than Hillary Clinton, I guess, since she once sat for 11 hours of questioning.
As such a manifestly unqualified candidate, his increasingly certain confirmation to be Defense Secretary is the quintessential DEI hire, someone hired for his culture and identity rather than his qualifications. The hiring of someone for who he is and not any qualifications he might have is precisely what right wingers have been leading jihads against for years. And yet the entire MAGA world is rushing headlong to install a guy with no qualifications to run DOD.
To be sure, Hegseth is qualified for a few things Trump wants from him. He made it clear yesterday he’ll implement unlawful orders from Trump, including to use the military to support Trump’s mass deportations or to shoot protestors. And he’ll defend those service members who implement those unlawful orders loudly and shamelessly. That’s what Trump saw Hegseth doing on Fox News. That’s why he got hired.
The how of all this — which Rebecca Traitster laid out here — matters.
Sure, Hegseth has worked on cultivating the three women Senators who might oppose him: Joni Ernst, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. In her statement announcing she will support him, Joni Ernst listed the concessions on women in the military — and that audit Hegseth has no qualifications to deliver.
After four years of weakness in the White House, Americans deserve a strong Secretary of Defense,” said Senator Joni Ernst. “Our next commander in chief selected Pete Hegseth to serve in this role, and after our conversations, hearing from Iowans, and doing my job as a United States Senator, I will support President Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense. As I serve on the Armed Services Committee, I will work with Pete to create the most lethal fighting force and hold him to his commitments of auditing the Pentagon, ensuring opportunity for women in combat while maintaining high standards, and selecting a senior official to address and prevent sexual assault in the ranks.
After a campaign threatening unlimited donations to ouster her, Hegseth has given Ernst the cover she’ll need to take a vote that she must know is an abdication of her constitutional duty to advise and consent.
But Hegseth pointedly did not meet with any Democrat but Ranking Member Jack Reed (who excoriated his lack of qualifications in an opening statement).
When Democrats asked Hegseth about allegations of sexual misconduct or alcohol abuse, Hegseth never denied any of it; he simply said those were anonymous smears (even when Tim Kaine and Mark Kelly noted there are names attached to some of these allegations)
When Kelly asked Hegseth if he had been under oath when providing those answers, Hegseth again attacked the claims.
When Democrats asked Hegseth if such behavior would disqualify him — which should have elicited a commitment that if and when he is proven to be a drunk or a philanderer going forward, he’d have to step down — he refused to answer.
Tammy Duckworth asked a number of pointed questions (including about whether he had led an audit), including what international negotiations the Secretary of Defense conducts and whether he could name an ASEAN country (apparently Hegseth was so poorly prepared to answer Democrats’ questions, no one thought to warn him Duckworth might ask questions about Thailand, where she was born to an American service member father). Hegseth could only think of South Korea, Japan, and Australia among our allies in the region, none of which is in ASEAN.
Republicans dismissed his bumbling responses by noting that ASEAN is not a military alliance. Democrats did not note, in return, that that nevertheless betrays ignorance about the Philippines, a country at the center of our conflict with China, something that Hegseth (and every Republican on the committee) claim is a paramount concern.
With just a few exceptions, though, Democrats failed to do what they needed to do to create a video confrontation the likes of which might make an effective response to ads (above) already running in Iowa that might dissuade Republicans from supporting him or — when and if his incompetence blows up and harms the US — holds them accountable for their abdication of duty.
WSJ’s editorial board, which would love to find a way to get someone more competent, deemed Tim Kaine’s questioning about Hegseth’s lack of transparency about a sexual assault allegation documented in a police report to be the most effective.
The most effective Democratic questioning came from Virginia’s Tim Kaine, who wanted to know why Mr. Hegseth didn’t disclose to the Trump team a settlement he paid to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Mr. Hegseth kept saying he was “falsely charged” but never answered the question.
This is right: Democrats need to focus their opposition in a way that it would incur a cost for Republicans. Painting Hegseth as a guy who kept secrets from Trump is a more effective way of hitting his transparency failures than painting the public as a victim. And when they asked about Hegseth’s more fundamental disqualifications — his unwillingness to back the Geneva Conventions, for example — Democrats failed to explain the impact of that, an invitation for others to torture American service members.
Kaine also released the most effective summary of the hearing — a screen cap showing a Republican prop complaining about lowered standards purportedly tied to diversity that misspelled military.
Republicans claim to oppose “DEI” because it lowers standards. At the same time, at a time when DOD increasingly has to rely on a second chance program that Hegseth endorsed to qualify (disproportionately male) candidates with physical, educational, or legal disqualifications, they’re rushing to install someone whose disqualifications may do real damage, even assuming America’s adversaries don’t find a way to use them to compromise the Defense Secretary.
And now, having capitulated to Trump’s demand to install someone who is so obviously unqualified to lead DOD, it’ll make it easier for Republicans to confirm Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. You’ve already put the good of the country behind loyalty to Trump.
Trump and his allies bullied the Senate into backing a DEI Christian Nationalist, one who himself backs DEI for (ha!) fat men with criminal records.
The dynamic needs to be laid out clearly: When pushed, Republicans did precisely what they claim to oppose. They chose to make the US less secure because Trump demanded personal loyalty over loyalty to country.
Update: I made a picture to explain why Hegseth’s utter ignorance about ASEAN matters.
We’re in a war with Russia. We’re using the Ukrainians as our beard.
We have pro-Russian operatives at the ‘highest’ levels.
Russia has fossil fuels. Russia has nuclear power. Russia has a corrupt political environment that is the enemy of freedom.
We have pro-Russian operatives at the highest levels.
Our beard seems to be pretty damn lethal. Ask Putin.
I wonder, does Joni think her daughter can kill better than the sons and daughters of Ukraine who are defending their own homeland?
Billionaires probably threatened GOP Senators more than Hegseth courted them, but it was a tag team match.
A hook that might have gotten under some of GOP skins, if anything would, is Hesgeth’s attitude not just towards war crimes but towards the threat that war criminals are to their fellow service members.
On Monday NBC had a good piece,
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/military-officers-worry-pete-hegseth-turn-blind-eye-us-war-crimes-rcna183732
which showed how worried people are in the military about having somebody lead the Pentagon who had lobbied successfully for the pardoning of convicted war criminals.
But the story neglected to say that in the case of Eddie Gallagher, not only had he committed war crimes but he
had threatened to kill any of his SEAL squad members who reported his actions to the chain of command.
The idea that anybody who has defended that conduct should then be in charge of the U.S. military is insane.
That is something that’s pretty easy to lay out, doesn’t go into the weeds, would have made effective TV,
and would have resonated with anybody who supports the military or pretends to.
Why the Democrats didn’t front and center it, who knows.
A shitty omen, indeed.
I agree, and would add that this argument applies also to Donald Trump–the ultimate pardoner of war criminals and their fanboyz like Joe Arpaio.
Brilliant fucking frame, Marcy. Thank you x 100 or so. This should be the Dems mantra for all these incompetent, toxic, noxious bozos in the Trump appointments queue.
As to why the Dems haven’t clued themselves in? The answer is blowin’ in the (GOP) win.
I’m gonna try and spread this one around; it’s absolute polemic gold. If the Dems can’t figure this one out, it bodes long-term-catastrophe.
Hegseth is not a DEI hire. He’s a UPEI hire: uniformity, prejudice, exclusion & inacessibility. You’re co-opting the rightwing label DEI hire as if it’s a legitimate slur.
In my opinion, DEI is a legitimate slur. It’s the flip side of cancel culture and, apart from no god being worshipped, it’s no better than the many religions built upon a bullshit premise.
For my support, I’ll point to “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter and “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo.
I’m with @PensionDan here. If DEI is adopted as a right-wing slur, then its original meaning–and purpose–will get washed away. This is not a trap we want to fall into.
Hegseth was arrogant, smarmy with no straight answers. His mother said, “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, you are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth… your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out.” Penelope Hegseth
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/hegseth-email-text.html
FYI: In the military adultery is illegal and punishable under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) resulting in separation or discharge from the military.
Exactly! Well said!
Adultery is no longer an automatic reason for being court-martialed. It’s now circumstance dependent. Plus, the SecDef, by definition, is a civilian, not part of the uniformed military, and is not subject to the UCMJ. He should be an avatar of its standards, however. But Trump and his people have no standards.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/15/2297046/-Marcy-Wheeler-Identifies-the-GOP-Coffin
Just trying to get this proliferated a bit more. It’s absolutely brilliant. Thanks again, Marcy.
Already #2 on the rec list.
And now Jen Rubin chimes in, on her new post-WaPo blog, “The Greatest DEI Disaster Ever”:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-154867647
And the dKos diary is now at the top of the rec list, beating out Dworkin’s piece about Hegseth!
(not sure if you’re letting substack links stand here, Rayne. If not, the comment alone is enough.)
Brilliant! Now that you mention it that way; every one of Trump’s cabinet nominees are “DEI Hires”!
At least the Roman Senate was spared the indignity of confirming Caligula’s horse.
True, and that means no one threatened to primary the Roman senators if they didn’t vote to confirm.
I’m just wondering which of these highly-unqualified upcoming Trump-loyalist hires is going to drop the ball first. It’s just a question of time. Not least a personally vulnerable Secretary of Defense with full-on Russian military aggression now unleashed on the world. That cookie is surely going to crumble.
Every voter for, including Ernst, must own this.
Agreed.
I expect the turnover in Trump’s cabinet to be higher than during his first term, especially during the election years of 2026 and 2028 as the billionaire financial backers and their House & Senate Republicans scramble to remain the majority in both legislative bodies.
As for Putin and MBS learning more US secrets from Trump et al, Trump likely gave them all of the US secrets during his first term.
The USG generates new secrets every day. It’s been four years since Trump was president.
This is an obvious reply, but my guess is “all of them, Katie”. The ball dropping will put synchronized swimmers to shame.
Benjamin Wittes calls it “The Cult of Unqualified Authenticity”.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation–the-cult-of-unqualified-authenticity
Markwayne Mullin excuses Hegseth’s drinking by asking whether any of the senators knew one of their colleagues was drunk during a late night vote and if so, why didn’t they ask them to resign. Glad he has such high standards for public service. Do you think the Dems just assumed they would be given another round of questioning where they could ask questions about the depth of his knowledge of the world? Many Republicans seem to be under the impression it doesn’t really matter that Hegseth has no experience as other people will really be doing that job. Who would that be? Do we have any idea? How do we breakthrough to a public that buys into Hollywood movies and thinks if you just kill enough “bad” people, the “good” people will live happily ever after? Israel is trying that and Hamas is already reconstructing.
“
No doubt, many Senators suffer from toxic masculinity, Markwayne Mulllin included, and have suffered from addictions to womanizing and alcohol. But those aren’t the only reasons the majority of them would be unqualified to serve as SecDef.
This is an excellent post from EW. It put into words what I was thinking and feeling about yesterday’s Hegseth hearing.
Masha Gessen is being proven correct, and the Trump goons are consolidating power.
The Bondi hearing today is exactly what you would expect it to be.
This is all part of the performative, professional-wrestling level show that Trump is producing. Hegseth may be unspectacularly qualified, but hey . . . he looks the part. I mean, look at those biceps!
Tim Sheehy actually asked him how many pushups he can do, which tells you everything you need to know.