Dem
47
GOP
53
Pete Hegseth is in deep trouble. So much that he rates a separate item. This item is being written late Wednesday afternoon and if Hegseth fails to make it to 8 a.m. Thursday, which is a real possibility, we can then easily delete it without affecting the rest of the blog. First strike: He has never run anything bigger than two small veterans groups and was fired from both. Second strike: His own mother told him that he is a despicable person. Third strike: He paid off a woman who went to a hospital with bruises claiming he raped her. Fourth strike: A recent article said he abused not only women but also alcohol. Fifth strike: His crusade for traditional family values is littered with his many affairs and divorces. Five strikes? You thought three and you're out? No, in bowling, you can have up to 12 strikes.
The news just keeps coming. That is why vetting the candidates before even announcing the nomination is so important. The news about his being fired from the veterans groups, his mother's e-mail, the alleged sexual assault and resulting hush money payment, and alcohol abuse are "old" news already. Yesterday the story about his private life broke. In high school he was a big jock who dated a homecoming queen candidate. He later married her. A true power couple. He then became a culture warrior for the traditional family. You know, the kind where the husband has affairs with multiple women and gaslights his wife about them. It took her 3 years to figure out she needed to file for divorce. But by then, he was already hanging out with his new squeeze, while married to wife #1. Then after divorce #1, he married the squeeze. But he quickly got bored with her and fathered a child with his Fox News producer while still married to #2. Oh, and that is when the affair that led to the hush money happened. Wife #2 couldn't hack that, she also filed for divorce. Now you see what Mom was getting at? If you ever need a good source on conservative Christian family values, Pete's the guy to ask. He has years of practical experience in the field.
Senators can read the newspaper and those who can't have aides who can. They can also watch TV. One report was headlined: "Trump's pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is in peril in the Senate." The chyron reads: "Hegseth's Drinking Raised Concerns at Fox."
The story said that six Republican senators are not comfortable supporting him. Presumably the other 47 are scared witless. It is a pity you can't short politicians the way you can short stocks. There would be money to be made here if you could.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is a veteran and on the Senate Armed Services Committee, explained that she planned to grill him about alcohol abuse, mistreatment of women, and financial mismanagement. She said: "We're just going to have a really frank and thorough conversation." English translation: "Donald, get his a** out of here so we don't have to embarrass you by voting him down." And many Republican senators will take their cues from Ernst given her background in military affairs and general no-nonsense approach to things.
The next phase in these soap operas involves the accused fighting back. Yesterday, Hegseth tweeted: "I'm doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers. The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of @realDonaldTrump—and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don't want truth. Our warriors never back down & neither will I." Note to Pete if you are reading this: Joni Ernst is a Republican. She is famous for castrating hogs. Watch your back. And other body parts.
As of this morning (thankfully), the fat lady hasn't started singing. But Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is already auditioning for the job. La la la. Trump hates his guts, but DeSantis has the big advantage that he is a mainstream Republican and can get confirmed very easily, maybe even with a few Democratic votes. When some senator asks, "The secretary has to manage 3 million people, can you do that?" he will respond: "Well, I am already managing 23 million Floridians." Then when the senator asks: "Can you manage a budget of $800 billion?" he will say: "Well, I manage a state whose GDP is $1.6 trillion, so no problem."
From DeSantis' point of view, being secretary of defense gives him something to do after he leaves office in Jan. 2027. It also gives him crucial foreign policy experience that will help in the 2028 primaries, especially if Trump ignores his veep and doesn't give J.D. Vance any foreign policy work to do. Also, Trump likes it when his underlings fight with each other, and setting up DeSantis to fight with Vance would be something he would enjoy.
DeSantis has plenty of experience managing a large bureaucracy. Also, he has plenty of defense experience. He was a lieutenant commander in the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps, worked at Guantanamo, then at the Naval Special Warfare Command. He deployed to Iraq in 2007 for a year and is now in the Navy Reserve. He is smart (although his political judgment is weak) and works hard. Given his military experience as a commissioned officer in the Navy and his experience as governor of a very large state, the Pentagon brass would probably respect him. He also served three terms in the House, so he knows something about how Congress works.
One downside of DeSantis in the Cabinet is that he and Trump hate each other and he might try to sabotage Trump in various ways if he thought he could do it without getting his fingerprints on it. But Trump thinks he is smarter than everyone else and "knows" he could easily outsmart an ambitious guy who went to Yale and Harvard Law School. Another downside is that DeSantis would bring much of his campaign staff with him and give them cushy jobs so they could secretly work on his 2028 campaign.
If Hegseth is forced out (by which we mean Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD, tells Trump that the votes are not there and it's not even close), and Trump's personal animosity to DeSantis gets the better of him, another option is Ernst. She was a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and served in Kuwait during the Iraq war. Her confirmation hearing would be one of the Capitol's greatest love stories ever and she might well be confirmed 100-0. (V)