Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s controversial Secretary of Defense, certainly knows how to fight.
It’s right there in his biography: Combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Two bronze stars.
On Friday, after a round of meetings with Republican senators who will vote on his nomination, it appears he is winning.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more than the Fake News would have you believe…’
The reporting in the mainstream media is not so positive.
Hegseth is “fending off allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement,” an ABC News reporter lamented Friday.
I’m not the only one experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu.
During Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation fight, there was an avalanche of claims against the judge, ranging from trivial (teenage alcohol abuse) to initially plausible (sexual assault) to demonstrably false (a gang rape smear).
Hegseth is “fending off allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement,” an ABC News reporter lamented Friday. I’m not the only one experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more than the Fake News would have you believe…’ The reporting in the mainstream media is not so glowing. (Above) Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents after an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler, PA on July 13, 2024
Senate Democrats, including Kamala Harris, called Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, a courageous #MeToo survivor. Then scratching the surface revealed serious flaws in Ford’s story.
But before the truth could overtake the salacious testimony, hysterical pressure mounted on then-President Trump to withdraw Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Trump could have folded, let Kavanaugh go and moved on. Luckily he didn’t.
Now, once again, we must not allow those same abhorrent tactics to prevail in a battle of this magnitude. Because make no mistake: the campaign to destroy Pete Hegseth is just one facet of a concerted plot to sabotage the incoming Trump administration.
And just as it was with Kavanaugh six years ago, the attacks on Hegseth are being defeated one by one.
His critics first claimed that a tattoo on his chest indicated hidden white nationalist sympathies. Nonsense: The ‘Jerusalem Cross’ is an anodyne Christian symbol on display in the Archdiocese of Washington DC.
Perhaps damning – and eerily familiar – is the claim that Hegseth raped a woman at a political conference in 2017.
The accuser told police that Hegseth forced himself on her in his hotel room after a night of partying. Hegseth says the sex was consensual, although he deeply regrets it.
The claims about the woman’s police report are repeated ad nauseum in the media, but the fact that the police investigated and refused to press charges is not.
Pete Hegseth, the embattled President-elect Donald Trump, certainly knows how to fight. It’s right there in his biography: Combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Two bronze stars.
Also not emphasized enough is that the accuser suggested to police that she had been drugged by Hegseth, but her husband told investigators that she did not appear to be harmed when he saw her shortly after the encounter.
Subsequently, the New Yorker Magazine reported that Hegseth was forced out of previous leadership positions at two nonprofit veterans advocacy groups due to financial mismanagement and unprofessionalism.
Hegseth credibly denies it all. His successor at Concerned Veterans For America (CVA), a vet charity, says that when Hegseth left CVA to join Fox News Channel in 2014, he did so on good terms.
Then came more accusations of excessive drinking.
When ten current and former Fox News employees claimed that Hegseth was often hungover or drinking on the job, none of them went public. To the contrary, more than a dozen of Hegseth’s other colleagues at Fox News have – publicly – refuted these claims.
After returning from his third mission abroad in 2014, Hegseth said he was confronted with personal demons. He had divorces and extramarital affairs.
But by all accounts, he is now a devoted churchgoer and in a stable marriage. Until Trump nominated him, the two-time Ivy League alum led a successful career in television journalism.
In some ways, his story is a laudable American redemption story, the kind the left would have celebrated… if it happened to anyone on their team.
His critics first claimed that a tattoo on his chest indicated hidden white nationalist sympathies. Nonsense: The ‘Jerusalem Cross’ is an anodyne Christian symbol on display in the Archdiocese of Washington DC.
When ten current and former Fox News employees claimed that Hegseth was often hungover or drinking on the job, none of them went public. To the contrary, more than a dozen of Hegseth’s other colleagues at Fox News have – publicly – refuted these claims.
Make no mistake: the campaign to destroy Pete Hegseth is just one facet of a concerted plot to sabotage the incoming Trump administration.
This comeback story is troublesome for powerful interests like the Beltway defense contractors and the DC swamp creatures, all of whom would like to see more malleable men running the Pentagon.
But this is the battle that Donald Trump was elected to fight – the grueling battle against an entrenched status quo.
Days after the election, prominent Democrats openly discussed ways to obstruct the government.
Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, proposed a series of executive orders that President Joe Biden could issue to “protect existing structures” and protect career bureaucrats and Justice Department officials.
This week, after our current norm-breaking president pardoned his son, we learned that senior White House aides are pushing to grant mass preemptive pardons to a slew of officials, including the president’s former chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci and California senator. choose Adam Schiff.
These movements are not entirely unprecedented. President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter granted clemency to draft dodgers in the Vietnam War, and Abraham Lincoln acquitted ex-Confederate soldiers for their treason.
These were all people who undoubtedly committed crimes. So what have Fauci and Schiff done?
Leading blue state governors are also openly engaging in conspiracies.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom is leading a special legislative session aimed at “Trump-proofing” his state by raising a $25 million legal fund to thwart federal initiatives he finds objectionable – such as the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants immigrants.
Hours after the 2024 election, New Jersey’s Phil Murphy vowed to “fight to the death.” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker warned Trump ominously: “You come for my people, you come through me.” Humiliated but never humiliated, Kamala herself has vowed to ‘stay in the fight’.
And all this is welcomed by a compliant mainstream media, which is happy to denounce the claims of anonymous accusers when convenient, and willing to ignore accusations when they are uncomfortable.
The battle to confirm Pete Hegseth will be just one in a long, long war.
Josh Hammer is the syndicated host of “The Josh Hammer Show” and editor-in-chief at Newsweek.