Pete Hegseth pledged that if confirmed as secretary of defense he will be “laser-focused on warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards and readiness,” before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
The three main emphases in the new administration’s Pentagon leadership will be put on restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and re-establishing deterrence, Hegseth said at his confirmation hearing.
“Unlike the current administration, politics should play no part in military matters. We are not Republicans or Democrats—we are American warriors. Our standards will be high, and they will be equal — not equitable, that is a very different word,” Hegseth said in his opening statement.
With service in Afghanistan and Iraq as a Minnesota National Guardsman, Hegseth described his selection for secretary as coming at the “right time to give someone with dust on his boots” from the “war on terror” the leadership of the Defense Department.
In opening the SASC hearing, chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, (R-Miss.) said, “This nomination is unconventional. This nominee is unconventional, just like that New York developer who rode down the escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. That may be what makes Mr. Hegseth an excellent choice to improve this unacceptable status quo.”
Hegseth met resistance from senior Democrats on the panel.
“I do not believe you are qualified,” Sen. Jack Reed, (D-R.I.) ranking member of the committee, said in his remarks before member questioning began. “The challenge of the secretary of defense is to remove politics from the military,” he said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of the 44-year-old combat veteran and former weekend “Fox and Friends” anchor has been controversial from the start. Hegseth, in his opening statement, said “there was a coordinated smear campaign orchestrated in the media against me.” He repeatedly said these allegations came from anonymous sources, a point Democratic senators, including Virginia’s Tim Kaine, disputed.
“They are not anonymous. We have seen more records with names attached to them,” Kaine said.
Wicker agreed with Hegseth on the origin of most of the allegations against him.
“The left-wing media doesn’t care about the truth because I’m a change agent.” Hegseth added, “I’m not a perfect person, [but] redemption is real.”
Tuesday’s hearing was one of the most contentious sessions in years in a committee known for its bipartisanship on defense and national security policy. Before committee members could question him, Hegseth’s opening statement to the committee was disrupted three times by protestors. Capitol Police removed the protesters each time.
Hegseth and Democratic senators repeatedly talked over each in the seven-minute question session. They hotly disputed each other over women in combat roles; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer continued military service; and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies.
Equally contested were Democratic senators’ questions over his personal behavior and his responses before and during the hearing to allegations of womanizing, heavy drinking and competency in leading organizations.
Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand, (D-N.Y.) who was a congressional leader in changing court-martial procedures in sexual assault cases, said she found his comments on women in the military “brutal; they’re mean.”
“I have never disparaged women serving in the military,” Hegseth said.
“I do believe in high standards,” Sen. Joni Ernst, (R-Iowa) who served in her state National Guard in overseas deployments and was a victim of sexual assault. The service member “must be able to physically meet those standards to complete their mission.”
She added before questioning that she and Hegseth has met regularly before the hearing to answer her questions on women’s roles in the services and his position on sexual assault cases. She described those meetings as “productive” and “frank.”
Hegseth said, “we’ll have a review to make sure standards have not been eroded.”
“I know what I don’t know” to effectively lead an organization, he said. If confirmed Hegseth said he would select men and women that can “build the plan, work the plan.”
Few questions were asked in the first three-plus hours of the hearing over specific programs. Wicker and committee members continually added to the official hearing record letters, emails and other documents supporting Hegseth or urging rejection of the nomination.
Hegseth said all three legs of the nuclear triad needed to be modernized as China and Russia have accelerated development of delivery and weapons systems. “Our survival depends on it,” he said.
He was more cautious on the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile – Nuclear [SLCM-N], saying he would be “getting a look under the hood” to determine “if we need it to match the threat.”
Hegseth added that all these modernization programs are running behind schedule and over-budget. He said those delays of rising costs can often be attributed to the Pentagon’s insistence on prototyping rather than starting digitally to determine what’s feasible, what can be added, what to drop.
To better track its $857 billion budget, Hegseth told Ernst he would prioritize an audit for the Pentagon.
“Previous secretaries of defense, with all due respect, haven’t necessarily emphasized the strategic prerogative of an audit,” he said.
While the Marine Corps has successfully completed full audits, the Pentagon overall has not passed one.
He added that a Navy secretary in the Trump administration would be focused on shipbuilding, not climate change.
Raising the question of recruiting overall and the service academies’ curriculum, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, (R-Ala.), said “we’re in trouble now” in attracting qualified young men and women to military service.
To attract more recruits, Hegseth said, “I think it comes down to clear leadership” that Trump and the new administration will provide. “The military at a lot of levels has been a family business” with each succeeding generation service. “That chain has been broken.”
Hegseth said the service academies needed to bring back more officers with experiences in the field to teach rather than hiring more civilian professors from “leftist” academic cultures.
“You have to rip out root and branch” those that tilt politically away from “warrior ethos and standards,” he added.
Committee Democrats often began their questioning by saying they have not yet met with Hegseth and most did not have access to his FBI background check. Only Wicker and Reed were briefed on its findings. Reed said the background check on Hegseth was “insufficient.”
When the hearing ended, Chairman Wicker said, “I think [Hegseth] helped himself immensely.”
If the Armed Services Committee advances Hegseth’s nomination, the full U.S. Senate will likely vote on his confirmation on Jan. 20, the same day Trump is sworn into office.
