The verdict’s in! All the grotesque Democrat smears and hysterical rants at Pete Hegseth’s hearing have finally backfired, writes JOSH HAMMER

Democrats set the tone early Tuesday in the highly anticipated confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump’s embattled Defense Secretary: double down, triple down and quadruple down on false accusations and discredited smears.

He’s an alcoholic! He’s a rapist! He’s a misogynist! Oh, and he also destroyed a veteran’s charity!

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, led Banzai’s charge, and his colleagues followed: the hysterical Kirsten Gillibrand, the dim-witted Mazie Hirono, the self-righteous Tim Kaine and the screaming Elizabeth Warren, who were among them . the legislative lightweights.

Senator Hirono concocted a fantastical scenario that no sane person would find plausible, ludicrously accusing Hegseth of plotting to invade Greenland and retake the Panama Canal by force.

Virginia Man, Tim Kaine, clutched his pearls and lambasted Hegseth for being at the very least an adulterer, if not quite (but maybe!) a literal rapist. This, from the party of Bill Clinton!

Hegseth, who has been the victim of the most blatant coordinated smear campaign between Democrats and the mainstream media since Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court nomination battle, was in turn supported by a phalanx of Navy SEALs and veterans. The Democrats, in turn, were flanked by Code Pink psychopaths, two of whom interrupted Hegseth’s opening statement.

One protester shouted, as he was dragged out of the room, that the former Army National Guard was a “Christian Zionist!” and another condemned him for his support of Israel’s war against Hamas.

Hegseth proudly said both claims were true.

If these are the people opposing his appointment, then the entire nation should rally behind him.

So, what gives? Well, there’s a saying in the legal profession: “If you’ve got the law on your side, buck the law.” If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. And if you don’t have either of them on your side, pound the table!’

The Democrats’ objections to Hegseth ranged from the merely overwrought to the downright insane and have previously been raised here in the Daily Mail.

First, there’s the lie that Hegseth is “unqualified”—a slander advanced by none other than Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who has admitted that he “misspoke” (read: lied) about being “in Vietnam has served’. In reality, Blumental received five deferrals before serving six years in the Marine Reserves but never leaving U.S. territory.

Frankly, it’s hard to find a recent candidate better qualified to lead the Pentagon than Hegseth. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served honorably in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan and received two Bronze Stars for his service. He headed a major veteran’s advocacy organization and honed his communication skills as a smooth Fox News Channel host.

Sounds pretty qualified to me! And as for the specific argument that Hegseth has no experience maneuvering around the Byzantine Pentagon bureaucracy? That actually sounds more like a credit than a debit on Hegseth’s balance sheet. Moreover: God forbid that Donald Trump, who campaigned on the populist campaign message of “drain the swamp” and won, actually nominates someone to his cabinet who is not a career bureaucrat. Democrats claim they care deeply about “democracy,” but deny that a democratically elected president can give the people what they voted for. Square that circle.

Second, Democrats allege that Hegseth destroyed the nonprofit Concerned Veterans For America (CVA) while leading the organization. What nonsense. His CVA successor, my colleague Mark Lucas, has repeatedly said that when Hegseth left CVA to join Fox News in 2014, he did so on good terms.

Even more to the point, when in the world did Democrats start pretending to take private sector management skills seriously, like avoiding organizational debt burdens? It doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Third, the Democratic-mainstream media information operation has tirelessly vilified Hegseth as an alcoholic, philanderer, and rapist. They allege that Hegseth raped a woman at a political conference in California in 2017.

Hegseth denies the allegations and says his extramarital sexual encounter was consensual, although he regrets it, has since repented and is now a devoted churchgoer. Anonymous accusations of excessive drinking were also thoroughly refuted – on the record.

But what is certainly true, as Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said yesterday, is that these sanctimonious Democrats are a bunch of hypocrites.

“How many senators showed up drunk at night to vote? Did any of you ask them to resign and resign?’ Mullin asked his fellow committee members. “And how many senators do you know who got divorced before cheating on their wives? Have you asked them to resign? No, but it’s for show.’

Democrats turned the Hegseth hearing into a grotesque circus. It was everything that ordinary Americans have come to despise.

In reality, Hegseth is a brilliant choice to lead the Pentagon. At a time when reversing declining military recruitment is the single most important task for any future Secretary of Defense, America could do far worse than a telegenic, two-time Ivy League alum, 44-year-old, Bronze Star-winning warrior promising a to put an end to wokeness in the military and to ditch greedy defense companies.

If the goal is to inspire young people, especially young men from the South and the Midwest, to take up arms to serve their country, then Hegseth is a perfect messenger.

It will soon become clear that Democrats’ Brett Kavanaugh-style smear campaign to derail the Hegseth nomination has largely failed.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, an early Hegseth skeptic, announced Tuesday evening that she will support his nomination. And it’s entirely possible he’ll end up with a Democratic vote or two; perhaps John Fetterman, who recently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has finally had enough after the affirmative hysterics from his colleagues.

In reality, Democrats will only have themselves to blame for falling so pathetically short — for going out with a whimper and not a bang, as they did when they cast Trump as a non-stop leader during the 2024 election cycle. labeled fascist Nazi.

How many times will the Democrats cry wolf? How many times will they replay the weathered Kavanaugh playbook?

Nobody knows. But the Democrats seem to lose every time they do this.

On second thought, maybe they should keep this up.