The Senate Questions Pete Hegseth, as Trump's Cabinet Hearings Begin
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See if you qualify at oracle.com slash wallstreet. oracle.com slash wallstreet. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. President Trump's cabinet choices begin to face their Senate confirmation hearings this week.

Starting with Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, did the former infantry officer and TV host do what he needed to win a majority vote? And how much did the public learn about his plans for the Pentagon? Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal.

We're joined today by my colleagues, editorial board members Kate Batchelder-Odell and Colin Levy. For more than four hours on Tuesday, Pete Hegseth parried questions from the Senate about his view of America's defense priorities, as well as allegations against him of heavy drinking and a 2017 claim of sexual assault.

And tuning into these confirmation hearings, it wasn't hard to forget how much of Congress these days plays politics as a team sport. Let's start on the left side of the aisle. This is Virginia Senator Tim Kaine tangling with Mr. Hegseth. You have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two after you just had fathered a child by wife three. You've admitted that. Now, if it had been a sexual assault, that would be disqualifying to be secretary of defense, wouldn't it?

If it's a false claim then and a false claim now. If it had been a sexual assault, that would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, wouldn't it? That was a false claim. He's talking about a hypothetical. So you can't tell me whether someone who has committed a sexual assault is disqualified from being Secretary of Defense? Senator, I know in my instance, and I'm talking about my instance only, it was a false claim. But you acknowledge that you cheated on your wife.

and that you cheated on the woman by whom you had just fathered a child. You have been met at that. I will allow your words to speak for them. You're not retracting that today. And here with a friendlier tone from the right is Montana's new Senator Tim Sheehy. What is the diameter of the rifle round fired out of an M4A1 rifle? That's a 5.56. How many pushups can you do? I did five sets of 47 this morning. What do you think are most important strategic bases in the Pacific? In the Pacific?

Guam is pretty strategically significant. Kate, was that the tenor of most of this hearing back and forth, left and right? Or did we really learn anything new about the merits potentially of Hegseth's nomination to lead the Pentagon? We did not learn anything substantive really about how Hegseth views the world or America's role in it. He did start off his opening statement by saying, you know, we needed to rebuild the military, we needed to restore deterrence, and I believe restore meritocracy to the military and make sure the public has

confidence in it. Those are good priorities at 30,000 feet. But the lower you fly, the less we learned about what he thinks. The Democrats almost exclusively spent their time attacking him and many of them focused on on women in combat. He'd made remarks that women should not be allowed to serve in combat roles in the military.

But I think that was a mistake for a couple of reasons. One being that there's no evidence that Trump is going to focus on changing women's access to combat roles in the military. No evidence that he will put any sustained focus on that. And second, Hegseth defended himself by saying what he supports is that women meet the same high and equal standards as men, which most of the public agrees with.

And then lastly, Hegseth's whole calling card is that the military is too focused on social justice priorities. And the Democrats choosing to spend most of their time on gender and equity issues, I think, plays into that hand. Then on the Republican side, you had the Republicans doing a lot of blocking and tackling for Hegseth, including on allegations of how he managed some veterans groups that he ran and also his personal conduct, which I think Tim Kaine did the most well.

effective job attacking him on and Tim Kaine focused on. Did you tell this to the Trump transition team? Is there anything else you didn't tell them? I thought that was perhaps the most effective line of attack in the four hours. But overall, we did not learn much about what to expect from a Secretary Hegseth. Republicans seem to think he's on track to be confirmed.

So we'll have to confirm him to find out what he believes. The question of what he told the Trump transition team, I think, is a real one. There were news stories after the leak of this information that Hegseth had a financial settlement with someone who accused him of sexual assault in 2017. Given that the defense secretary needs to have the implicit trust of the president of the United States,

who he is serving. And similar, I would say, with these allegations of potential heavy drinking, I think that you can put the allegations about the personal conduct in a couple of different buckets. There have probably been, there probably will be defense secretaries, other cabinet secretaries with ugly divorces in their past, extramarital affairs and so forth. But interesting, Colin, one of the recent

claims now this is from a story in the new yorker as recently as the spring of 2023 hegseth ordered three gin and tonics in a weekday breakfast meeting with an acquaintance in manhattan quote it was an extremely strange experience his companion that morning told me

He suggested we go across the street to a bar. It was like 10 in the morning. He ordered two gin and tonics at the same time for himself. To be polite, I ordered one too, going on to say that Hegseth then had a third one. There's no name on this claim. So it is an anonymous allegation in a source that Republicans and conservatives are not inclined to trust the New Yorker by a writer that Republicans and conservatives are not inclined to trust Jane Mayer.

On the other hand, that is the kind of thing that might concern Republican senators more than an extramarital affair that is years in the past. Sure. I think allegations of irresponsible drinking are a real issue. They should be a real issue because you can't be operating the U.S. military under the influence of alcohol.

And I would say, as they handled this yesterday, there was, as Kate said, an awful lot of blocking and tackling. I thought that was unfortunate because some of these allegations against him did deserve a little bit more fleshing out and not just in the way that he was able to sort of constantly deflect and say, well, that was a false charge. You know, I watched most of the hearing yesterday and I

Unfortunately, after all of it, I don't think anyone came out of it and said, you know, oh, thank goodness. We now we really know who Pete Hegseth is and what kind of secretary of defense he'll be. I think there was just too much grandstanding by the Democrats on these pretty marginal issues and not enough focus on the big picture plans for addressing the U.S. military strength and America's role in the world.

On the drinking and sexual assault allegations, too, I also thought that there were several real missed opportunities. The best efforts, I think, to get after it did come from Tim Kaine and others who questioned his behavior because of how that reflects on his judgment. And there has clearly been serial infidelity here, I think.

you know, he wasn't really even inclined to deny it. He just sort of shrugged it off as anonymous smears. I think one of the things that bothered me watching it, frankly, is that the phrase anonymous smears seems to be the Trump world version of taking the fifth. And

And the inversion that was on display yesterday of moral indignation between Republicans and Democrats was disturbing. I mean, on both sides, frankly, and all of a sudden Republicans are shrugging off serial infidelity and serial drinking and accusation of sexual abuse. And Democrats were fiercely pursuing it. And usually it's been the opposite. So this may be the oldest story of political cynicism, but it still wasn't much fun to watch. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

AI requires a lot of compute power, and the cost for your AI workloads can spiral. That is, unless you're running on OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This was the cloud built for AI, a blazing fast enterprise-grade platform for your infrastructure, database, apps, and all of your AI workloads. Right now, Oracle can cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI. Minimum financial commitment and other terms apply. Offer ends March 31st.

See if you qualify at oracle.com slash wallstreet. Oracle.com slash wallstreet. Welcome back. One of the moments in the hearing that is getting headlines is this exchange from Republican Mark Wayne Mullen, Senator from Oklahoma. The Senator from Virginia starts bringing up the fact that what if you showed up drunk to your job? How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night? Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign for their job?

And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have. And then how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down? No. But it's for show. You guys make sure you make a big show and point out

the hypocrisy because a man's made a mistake. On one hand, I understand the point that he's making there. And without having any inside information, I don't find it difficult, all that difficult to believe that there are some senators who go to dinner and have some drinks and then come and vote on a late night vote. On the other hand, they are not in the nuclear chain of command. If there's something that happens,

happens around the world. The President of the United States calls the Defense Secretary and asks for some input, asks for some advice, get on over to the Situation Room. It is just a different kind of a job. And Kate, on the point about Hegseth's views on the issues, one of the things he said was that he looked forward to getting into the Pentagon and looking under the hood, getting access to classified information. And to some extent, fair enough, because

civilians are not privy to all of the details about all of the capabilities that the Pentagon has. On the other hand, what are the kind of questions that you think a defense secretary ought to be able to answer in terms of military hardware or rebuilding the U.S. military or our strategic posture around the world? Well,

Well, one of the reasons it's unfortunate that the hearing devoted so much time to his personal conduct and that those allegations had to be dealt with is because so much less bandwidth to discuss the dreadful security environment that the next administration is going to inherit and what they plan to do about it.

So it very seldom veered into any sort of substantive discussion about, you know, what should be our strategy for deterring the Chinese Communist Party from taking action in Taiwan Strait? What should the size and character of our Navy be? Should we be building different types of ships?

There was Tim Sheehy, who we just listened to, asked one question about naval shipbuilding, to which Hegseth said shipbuilding would be a priority. Now, that's good, but we don't have really any sense of how much he's thought about it. For instance, we've talked on this podcast before.

The U.S. is building about 1.2 nuclear attack submarines a year. We need to be closer to two. There are enormous dysfunctions in that process, including not enough dry dock space to maintain submarines, workforce shortage as the shipbuilders have to compete with Chick-fil-A and other places.

there's so much going on in that problem. And we did not get a good sense how he'd approach it. Even on some of these discrete programs, he was asked about, you know, a sea launched cruise missile that's nuclear, that might sound kind of like, you know, an arcane program. But it's been a defense debate for years, whether we should build this new particular missile that is a

tactical nuclear weapon is what it's called, and whether that would help us, for instance, deter Vladimir Putin from using his huge tactical nuclear arsenal on the European continent. So this is that's one example. There's this missile program, Pete Hegseth gets asked about it. And he says, Well, for now, I support it, but I'm going to have to look under the hood. Well, it was a kind of a missed opportunity to say what he thought about this debate, or if he'd

followed it. I mean, anytime it veered into a question like that, he deferred. Now, in fairness to Hegseth, one reason for that is the principle is Trump. He wants to leave his options open and doesn't want to be pinned down on some of these things. And, you know, he said, we're going to end the Ukraine war before I take office, which is looking unlikely here on January the 15th. And so it's left this environment, perhaps where his nominees feel they can't say anything. That is definitely a dynamic playing out. But I just think

Overall, it was an opportunity to educate the country about the threat picture around the world. And it was a missed one. And we didn't learn very much about what to expect from the new Trump administration on any of those subjects. Colin, what's your view of the politics here and the likelihood of Hegseth to get a majority vote? We have mentioned Iowa Senator Joni Ernst already.

The Des Moines Register calls her the first female combat veteran elected to serve in the U.S. Senate, and that point had been a potential sticking point for her on a podcast last year. Hegseth said, quote,

I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles, unquote. Hagseth seems to have have mollified those concerns for Joni Ernst. One of the things he said in the hearing is that women will have access to ground combat roles given that standards remain high. And now here's the statement from Senator Ernst after the hearing. She says, after four years of weakness in the White House, Americans deserve a strong Secretary of Defense.

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, unquote, which Colin is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Pete Hegseth, but might be a reflection of the politics on the ground there in Iowa. Yeah, no question.

I think everyone came after Joni Ernst pretty hard, and I think that's one of the reasons that she's had this conversion on his position. I think, frankly, the Democrats' sort of pursuit of his comments about women in the military were remarkably ineffective yesterday. They really burned up a lot of airtime talking about

diversity and issues that really were never going to derail this nomination. They only needed to flip one Republican on the Armed Services panel in order to block the nomination, but that really didn't appear likely at all during the hearing. I don't think there's anyone who came out of that and said, well,

He's toast. I think everyone is pretty confident now that he's going to get confirmed. He obviously had two major advantages. The first is that he's accustomed to arguing on TV. So, you know, he's very capable of deflecting and not flinching. The second, I think, is also that a lot of people sort of assumed that he's like Soldier Barbie.

So he really sort of had low expectations. I think the fact that he was able to speak with some conviction and fluency, even on some of these small issues, you know, I think it was after Sheehy's questions about how many pushups he did and some of the specifics, the different artillery, different things that he'd handled on the ground. He did come off as knowledgeable even on those small substantive things. So did, I think, probably pay off.

Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break.

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Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. The opposing party is always looking to knock out one or two cabinet nominees, prominent people to try to put some victories on the board for their party. It's

It's hard to see exactly where those might come, given the way that the Pete Hegseth hearings went. Today, there are several confirmation hearings. Marco Rubio is testifying in support of his nomination to be Secretary of State.

Pam Bondi for Attorney General, Sean Duffy at Transportation, John Ratcliffe as the CIA Director, Chris Wright at the Energy Department, and then Russell Vaught to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

Kate, one potential target here for Democrats, but I suppose some Republicans too, is Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence. Interesting, in recent days, there's been a bit of a controversy over Section 702 surveillance powers, something that as a member of Congress, Gabbard had voted against and opposed.

opposed. Some members of the Senate, including James Langford, Republican from Oklahoma, saying that that would be a real sticking point for them if the director of national intelligence was not going to support this Section 702 authority to surveil foreigners abroad. And now Gabbard seems to be suggesting that she's had a change of heart on that. Yes, I think that is obviously the timing is very amusing and suspect that suddenly she has reversed her course on Section 702 and the ability to

surveil non-citizens outside the U.S. But she has basically said that she just wanted reforms and that reforms have been made. And now she accepts the validity of this tool. That just doesn't pass the smell test, given her priors championing Edward Snowden and other figures like that. I don't think that's a credible change of views. I think at this point, the scuttlebutt, of course, is that Tulsi Gabbard endorsed Trump.

And he told her, you know, you can be in the cabinet. And now Senate Republicans can help him get an escape hatch from that bad deal. And that would be a favor to Trump at this point. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard is not just a Democrat, but she has opposed all of some of the best foreign policy things Trump did in his first term, including leaving an arms control treaty, including going after the Iranian General Soleimani. She met with Assad in Syria. I mean, she has been

as Bob Gates said about Joe Biden, wrong on pretty much every major foreign policy question that she's weighed into. And so I think at this point, Republicans would be doing Trump a favor by getting him out of this bad deal he had to make and saying, you know, nope, we got to come up with a new director of national intelligence. For the record, here is Gabbard's recent statement. She says that if confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans' Fourth Amendment rights.

while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of Americans. She also calls it a unique capability that cannot be replicated and must be safeguarded. Colin, the other question mark in my mind is a similar case, which is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., someone who in the midst of the 2024 presidential campaign endorsed the

Donald Trump maybe brought some voters over to his camp who would have been skeptical otherwise. Donald Trump has nominated RFK to be the head of the Health and Human Services Department. But similar, that is a bargain between RFK Jr. and Donald Trump. And, you know, who is not party to that bargain are Republican senators, right?

Republican senators don't have an obligation to support that kind of political electoral alliance deal between the Trump faction and the RFK Jr. faction. It'll be fascinating to watch those confirmation hearings when they come if there is some hard skepticism on the right toward RFK Jr. shown by the Senate.

That's for sure. And I really hope we start to see some of that hard skepticism reemerging from the right on some of these nominees. RFK Jr. is a classic one. I mean, there's so many problematic positions from him, vaccines being the most obvious. And Tulsi Gabbard, as Kate was just saying, I mean, there's real reasons for doubts about her. I mean, I think

just on a really basic level to get behind supporting a nominee of any party in any administration who's that wrong on foreign policy, you know, in such a big picture way. I think, you know, it's an entry level qualification to say we don't want a director of national intelligence who supports Iranian backed dictators

and also argues against American intelligence gathering and also is arguing for a pardon for Edward Snowden, someone who just stole massive amounts of intelligence and is now living in Moscow as a Russian citizen, I believe. So this is, I hope, in these forthcoming nomination battles where Republicans get their step back

a little bit. Even watching, I was watching a bit today, the hearings for Marco Rubio. And I think by comparison, those were so much more substantive today, so much more serious. The nomination is better in general. This is an area where he excels and he's able to be a serious voice for issues like human rights in China. But the way the questions in the hearing played out were much more substantive and gave, as you said, American voters a much better sense of what's coming

with American foreign policy than we saw out of the hearings for Hegseth. Kate, we'll give you the last word, but am I too out on a limb to think that there might be this Republican skepticism for Gabbard or RFK Jr.? Or do you think that we may be seeing some statements from

similar to the one issued by Joni Ernst saying the next president has chosen RFK Jr. to lead the health department and I'm going to support the choice of the next president or similar on Gabbard. I think there's still reason to think that many Republican senators really do take their advice and consent role seriously.

Obviously, Republicans think that the president should get to largely have the team he deserves, and they don't want to get in bogged down fighting a dozen nominees. They're going to have to be thoughtful about which nominees are not acceptable to them. And a reason I think Pete Hegseth wasn't on that list is because, one, these anonymous allegations about him aren't.

are hard to suss out if nobody's willing to put their name on them and come forward and explain what they are. They are hard to delineate and some of the public has started to tune them out because they don't think they're credible. And also because Hegseth has, I think, a high level view of the world that some of the Republican senators think

is good for Secretary of Defense, and he thinks America should lead in the world. He seems to think that at some level. He seems to think that we do need a larger military deterrent. Again, these are vague views. He wants to rebuild the industrial defense base. These have been priorities of Republican senators. So he, despite his personal baggage, is more aligned with Republican thinking on some of the

core issues at question than Tulsi, who is simply just outside that window. And I say the same thing about RFK Jr. and the senators like John Cassidy, who have spent time in the weeds on American health care. So I do think that there's reason to think that Republican senators will scrutinize some of these nominees more closely, and we'll pick a couple spots and try to do a quality improvement for Trump.

Thank you, Kate and Colin. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch. AI requires a lot of compute power and the cost for your AI workloads can spiral.

That is, unless you're running on OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This was the cloud built for AI. A blazing fast enterprise-grade platform for your infrastructure, database, apps, and all of your AI workloads. Right now, Oracle can cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI. Minimum financial commitment and other terms apply. Offer ends March 31st. See if you qualify at oracle.com slash wallstreet. oracle.com slash wallstreet.