Is Hegseth Toast?
He has to be, right?
So, the latest revelation that Pete Hegseth’s mother once e-mailed him to call him out for his character and behavior with women is enough to kill his nomination, right? I mean, we already have credible accusations of sexual assault to go along with misogynistic views about women in combat, and White nationalist adjacent tattoos. Plus, you know, the fact that he is utterly unqualified save in the most minimal of senses.
Under more normal circumstances the sexual assault allegations would have been enough to kill the nomination. But, under normal circumstances, Hegseth never would have been nominated and, moreover, would not have had the Gaetz nomination to make him look better (not to mention RFK, Jr., and a host of other less-than-stellar picks).
And without any doubt in my mind, the above knowledge plus the following would have devastated any chances for a nominee. Via the NYT: Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son of Mistreating Women for Years.
The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.
“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.
She also wrote: “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.”
Mrs. Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce.
So, will Mrs. Hegseth’s repudiation of her e-mail be enough to blunt its impact?
In the interview, she defended her son and disavowed the sentiments she had expressed in the initial email about his character and treatment of women. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting.”
For the record, I acknowledge that the publication of this e-mail is a breach of privacy and it is a very serious thing to have done. I will hasten to add, however, that being Secretary of Defense is a very serious job, and character matters (or, at least I thought it did). This letter adds to the growing preponderance of evidence that Hegseth is not worthy of the position.
Mrs. Hegseth emailed her son on April 30, 2018, during a turbulent period in his life. He was in the middle of a contentious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children. Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce after her husband impregnated a co-worker, part of a pattern of adultery that dated back to his first marriage.
I mean, I understand that life is complicated and that not all marriages last. But this is the picture of someone with deep character flaws, not just someone whose relationship didn’t work out. But, again, when POTUS has the same character, I guess that metric is out the door.
Mr. Hegseth married Meredith Schwarz, his high school sweetheart, in 2004, one year after they both graduated from college. Ms. Schwarz sued for divorce less than five years after their wedding. The 2009 court judgment cited Mr. Hegseth’s infidelity as the reason for the breakdown of the marriage.
The following year, Mr. Hegseth married Samantha. Within five years, they had three boys.
[…]
By late 2016, Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News contributor and aspiring anchor, was having an affair with Jennifer Rauchet, an executive producer at Fox News. He was named as the weekend anchor of Fox & Friends in early 2017 — a post he held until earlier this month, when Mr. Trump announced he wanted him to head the Defense Department.
Ms. Rauchet, who has three other children, delivered a baby girl in August 2017, one month before Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce. Mr. Hegseth married Ms. Rauchet in 2019 at a ceremony at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey.
The acrimonious divorce from Samantha took 10 months to finalize and led to the appointment of a parenting consultant to help negotiate disputes over dividing time with the children.
Sounds like a solid, trustworthy individual.
I expect that the defenses will be along these lines:
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in an email that The Times was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context snippet” of Mrs. Hegseth’s exchange with her son, adding that Mrs. Hegseth had “expressed regret for her emotional message and apologized.”
The Times published the entire e-mail here: Text of the Email That Pete Hegseth’s Mother Sent Him (I am out of gift links for the month, so you are all on your own for this one). To be clear, the e-mail itself proves nothing. But it is part of a broad pattern of behavior that is impossible to ignore.
I also expect a lot of defenders to attack the media for publishing the e-mail, rather than dealing with is implications. The rationalization was already underway in regard to the other alleged bad behavior, so who knows how this will hit?
Several key Republican senators have said that the sexual assault allegation in Monterey is not an obstacle to Mr. Hegseth’s nomination because it was never proven. But Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican of Iowa who has said she was sexually harassed while in the military, told Politico: “Any time there are allegations, you want to make sure they are properly vetted, so we’ll have that discussion.”
As I have noted in multiple posts on the nomination process: there is every reason to hold the nominees to a high standard because there are other options out there. Hegseth was a major test for the Senate GOP from the moment he was nominated, and that test has only gained in clarity since that time.
The fact my headline has a question mark and that I honestly don’t know if all of this will actually torpedo the nomination is a commentary on the incoming Trump administration and the general state of the Republican Party.
However, I will underscore that even if he withdraws or is rejected, this pick, along with all the others, continues to demonstrate the low character and terrible judgment of Donald J. Trump.
“Had I been raised in a family where faith, fidelity and fatherhood were not valued, my choices could have led to family breakdown,” he wrote in a publication about fragmented families for the Center of the American Experiment, a nonprofit group.
The moral center of American conservatism amounts to thinking that faith and family equals believing you as a person were right. Have an affair, get someone pregnant, break up a family and a marriage–as long as you feel you were in the right and the money keeps rolling in, it’s all good.
All of this happened before Trump, by the way. All while the progressive and left wing of the Democrats were building up to unleashing Me Too, the Republicans were lining up on the side of rapists.
It makes me wonder about the venom against MeToo and cancel culture. They went too far, sure, but as ‘too far’ goes–let’s put in perspective against how much tolerance there was and is for bad and abusive behavior. Hegseth is a rapist and scumbag but he emulated what he was taught by other rapists and scumbags from all political walks of life. There’s no difference between him and some guy in the media who was harassing interns. It’s hard to imagine people so angry about the left if they didn’t have a stake in what was being attacked.
So, how does the NYT obtain an email from Hegseth’s mother to Hegseth? Who else was on the email or which one of them shared it? I agree it was a private email but, short of hacking, someone made it public.
@Joe: “…how does the NYT obtain an email from Hegseth’s mother to Hegseth? Who else was on the email or which one of them shared it? I agree it was a private email but, short of hacking, someone made it public.”
Exactly. I don’t think this will be enough to deep-six his nomination but it will be the first drop in a storm of leaked documents and memories that will drown us in the coming weeks.
The message to Trump – still a little twitchy from the Gaetz now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t nomination – will be this guy is more trouble than he’s worth and should probably return to the private sector for now. I don’t think Trump wants more pie on his face. So if Hegseth is still the nominee by New Year’s Day, I’ll be amazed.
‘would have devastated any chances for a nominee.’
It may be that only Trump has the enduring and automatic Get Out of Jail Free Card.
@Joe: From the linked piece:
I can still remember back when Republicans were against rape. How quaint.
@Modulo Myself:
But this has become little more than a social veneer and conservative “virtue signaling.”
Which of the allegations against Hegseth cannot be said about Trump? And if Republicans are willing to defend Trump in spite of the allegations, why would they not support Hegseth if Trump publicly urges them to do it?
From the quoted NYT piece,
I’ve commented before that innocent until proven guilty is an appropriate standard for a trial that may deprive one of life, liberty, or money. But a Senate hearing is more of a job interview. If in doubt, don’t hire him.
However, I fear there may be an element of rejecting a few of Trump’s more absurd nominees as a pretense of independence before rubber stamping the merely ridiculous nominees.
@Modulo Myself:
If you’re one of Calvin’s elect, you’re one of the elect, end of story. What you do doesn’t change God’s will in making you one of the elect.
I never trust anyone who uses their faith in their business advertising.
Trump is an adjudicated rapist who praised his dear friend Jeff Epstein for liking “younger” women. Trump publicly sexualized his own daughter and bragged about assaulting women.
Republicans, the media, and now a plurality of voters have normalized these defects by making Trump president-elect again. So I doubt the less-bad allegations against Trump’s unqualified MAGAffirmative Action picks will matter.
@Steven L. Taylor: Did Mom also forward the backtrack message to the ex? That would be head trip. Maybe the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.
@Steven L. Taylor: Did Mom also forward the backtrack message to the ex? That would be head trip. Maybe the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.
@Joe: Good question.
@Michael Reynolds: “I can still remember back when Republicans were against rape.”
I believe that was back when they were looking for a cudgel to use against Kennedy men instead of holding them up as the new ideal.
@Joe: Hegseth’s mother copied the email to his wife, according to the Times.
I don’t think that Hegseth is fit to be Defense Secretary, either professionally, ideologically, emotionally, or morally.
I also think that my objections mean nothing one way or another for his confirmation. Making people like me suffer, and doing things we don’t like is part of the drama that is sought.
His confirmation, though, would go against a bunch of things that Republican Senators have previously voted in favor of. Most of them voted to confirm CQ Brown as Chair of the Joint Chiefs. Hegseth wants them out. Most of them spent a long time working out the whole “women in combat roles” business and accept it. As do most, if not all, of the brass.
So there is a negotiation here. Between those R senators and Trump. Nobody, I am sure, is going to see Pete Hegseth as someone to negotiate with, unless they find a way to blackmail him into withdrawing.
I have no idea how this will play out, though. Those R senators are going to defend themselves, though, and I expect them to do a fairly good job of it, even if they look like they are completely caving to Trump.
I have this conclusion because they voted, for instance, in favor of Ukraine aid, in spite of Trump’s campaigning and wishes. They were going to get major concessions on immigration from the D’s in exchange, but they got nothing at all. (And they aren’t now going to get nearly as good a deal, if any, now). But they still voted for Ukraine aid. There are other things…
If Trump wants a real loyalty test and a SecDef who could do real damage, Michael Flynn is still out there…
I just keep reminding myself that 49.9% of the voters voted specifically for this and that 51.x% specifically voted against the Democratic Party’s candidate. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” And “from here on up, it’s downhill all the way.”
@DrDaveT:
Flynn has been very busy criss-crossing the country recruiting an army of volunteers to help Trump carry out his vow of retribution.
Exactly. If Hegseth is toasted, it will not be because Trump has reconsidered his choice due to new information that makes Hegseth look like a bad fit for SecDef to him. If Hegseth’s nomination gets to Senate confirmation, the GOP won’t stand up to Trump if The Donald signals he really wants Hegseth to prevail. (Though, I can imagine they will go along if Trump decides to sacrifice Hegseth for something he wants more.)
We need to get comfortable with the inevitability that Trump will never make a bad decision or fail to deliver on a campaign promise over the next 4 years. He will be thwarted by the Deep State or undercut by “RINOs working with evil liberals.” And as @just nutha notes, 49.9% of the US electorate will side with Trump and hate the obstructers.
This is why we can’t have nice things…
@Michael Reynolds: “I can still remember back when Republicans were against rape. How quaint.”
IMHO, you remember a time when they *claimed* that, rather than openly confessing their love for it.
The real power move for Trump, to really humiliate Congress and show who is in charge, would be to pressure the Senate to confirm Hegseth, and then promptly fire him and replace him with Flynn at 3am, claiming that it is a recess appointment, since Congress was asleep at the time and daring anyone to do anything about it.
Anything else is cuck behavior.
@CSK: All the more reason to reward him for his service to MAGA. Trump doesn’t always reward loyalty, but Flynn already knows this, so the mistake is on him.
@Barry: And as wr noted, not really “against rape” as much as “willing to accuse Democrats of rape” to advance their agenda.
Republicans aren’t against rape. Rather, they’re against someone else doing the raping.
I think the reason Hegseth “should” be toast is that he stated publically that he thinks democracy isn’t America. He thinks America is him — the Christian whites. He thinks America stands for violent militarism directed against anyone outside his team. He’s all for DEI but only if it’s used so that the fascists always win. In short he’s saying he wants to end the reality of America and create a Christian theocracy. He hates democracy because democracy has the serious possibility of anyone not a freak like him being in power. This is in his book.
But Dick Durbin would view discussing any of that as uncivil, so we’ll probably have to focus on this email.
I’ll take whatever I can get to boot this unqualified religious fanatic from any lever of power, but it shouldn’t be this hard.
Trump’s contempt for public opinion about his appointments is evident in his choice of FBI Director … without even an attempt to justify firing the one already on office. It’s increasingly clear Trump has embarked on a sustained project to get totally unqualified, unsuitable people into key cabinet positions and is confident he can bend 50 Republican senators to his will.
In a rational world, senators would refuse to deal with these nominations piecemeal. They’d announce that no appointments would be considered until Trump withdrew the ones that are jokes and replaced them with people at least minimally qualified. They won’t do that, of course. They’ll summon up the courage to reject maybe one – probably Kennedy, who’s likely to prove the biggest political embarrassment if he’s confirmed – and meekly confirm the rest because “the president (or at least a Republican president) is entitled to have his own cabinet.”
Where is Focus on the Family when you need them? Ha.
As someone who worked in the 5-sided puzzle palace (Pentagon) 20 years ago I don’t have an issue with the “inexperience” aspect AKA, OMG, he’s an outsider, as I think the self-licking ice cream cone of DOD needs some fresh thoughts from the top.
I likewise am not going to do a Freudian analysis of tattoos. A couple of days after the election I ran into a Progressive woman I know who was wearing black mourning and had a temporary tear tattoo coming out of her eye and I did not ask her who she had murdered, nor what joint she’d done time in. The old meaning is “prison tattoo eye tear typically signifies that the wearer has committed murder, as the teardrop tattoo near the eye is widely associated with gang and prison culture, where it often represents a serious crime like taking a life.” Nope, over-analyzing, like fools having tattoos saying Egg Foo Yung. And the Republic of Georgia going what, our flag is now white supremacy?
Meanwhile I don’t think Hegseth is qualified or knowledgeable enough for the job and his character is questionable, as shown by his personal relationships.
Maybe Trump could get Bill Clinton to come out of retirement, so we could have a proper rapist and pedophile in government.
Or maybe Swallwell is available, a competent Chinese spy screwer.