Dem
47
GOP
53
Pete Hegseth is not going down without a fight. He said yesterday that he absolutely will not withdraw from consideration to be Secretary of Defense. Of course, that's what they all say, right up until they withdraw.
Hegseth, and his backers, have been putting on a full-court press in an effort to save his nomination. Reportedly, Donald Trump granted "special permission" to undertake a full-scale media campaign in an effort to win over the voting public and/or reluctant GOP senators. Hegseth's current, and very possibly ongoing, employer has been happy to oblige, as the nominee has been all over the place on Fox. Even when he's not personally present, they're talking up his credentials and downplaying his weaknesses.
Meanwhile, Hegseth also has someone else who is apparently (back) in his corner: his mother. The scathing e-mail that Mrs. Hegseth sent to her son, in which she declared "I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth," has gotten broad coverage (we wrote about it yesterday). Yesterday, Mom came out and said junior is a "changed man" and that the e-mail was written "in haste." Readers can decide for themselves how genuine they believe those sentiments to be.
In any event, none of this seems to be working. Every day, including yesterday, anonymous Republican senators tell reporters that Hegseth isn't going to make the cut, and that there are at least seven or eight "no" votes in the Senate Republican Conference. Remember, talking to reporters off the record is how senators tell a president "You better withdraw this nomination, unless you want to be embarrassed."
There's also another bit of bad news for Hegseth, perhaps even worse than the warnings from senators. As it turns out, he's not the nominee that Trump really cares about. Put another way, if the President-elect is going to go to the mat for someone, it's not going to be his secretary of defense nominee. Apparently, the two nominees who are do-or-die for Trump are... Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You might not have guessed that. And even if you did guess that, you probably didn't guess the reason for it.
As it turns out, Trump hasn't even returned to office, and he's already thinking about his historical legacy. He believes that he has reinvented the Republican Party, and that "Blue MAGA" is part of that. So, he wants the two most prominent Blue MAGA folks in his Cabinet. We would agree he reinvented the GOP, but we have a hard time swallowing the Blue MAGA part of it. We don't exactly see what constituency Gabbard and/or Kennedy represent. And even if that constituency exists, it does not seem like the type of constituency that can be locked down by a political party. Gabbard and Kennedy are both flighty and anti-establishment, and so are the folks who voted for them. Those people are just as likely to vote for the 2028 version of Marianne Williamson or Kanye West or Jill Stein as they are the 2028 Republican.
But the bottom line, for now, is that Pete Hegseth is increasingly on an island, and he cannot expect the S.S. Trump to swing by and rescue him. We'd guess the odds are only 50/50 that he makes it to the end of the weekend. (Z)