Matt Gaetz is gone…..
The attention turns to Hegseth…..
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said that the hearings to appoint former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense would be “pretty brutal,” considering the nominee’s sexual assault allegations.
“The military’s had an issue with sexual assault that they’ve been trying to address for a number of years, and now you’re putting the guy that’s potentially guilty of that in charge of the Pentagon,” he said on a Thursday night CNN appearance. “The hearings are going to be pretty brutal for him, and you know, we’ll see what comes out of that.
The former “Fox and Friends” host was accused of sexual assault in 2017, an allegation that he strongly denied.
Kinzinger added that it is possible more information about the allegations comes to light during the confirmation hearings, but, given Trump’s hold on the GOP, odds could be in Hegseth’s favor.
“The vast majority of Republicans will do whatever Donald Trump wants, and he wants [secretary of Defense] to be Pete Hegseth,” he said. “I think there’s going to be some senators that actually look at this very critically. I would say it’s about 50/50 chance he gets approved right now.”
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) decision to withdraw from consideration to become attorney general on Thursday has shifted some attention to President-elect Trump’s Hegseth’s nomination….
…
Jonathan Chait: “For a few hours, Pete Hegseth’s nomination as secretary of defense was the most disturbing act of Donald Trump’s presidential transition. Surely the Senate wouldn’t confirm an angry Fox News talking head with no serious managerial experience, best known for publicly defending war criminals, to run the largest department in the federal government. Then, in rapid succession, Trump announced appointments for Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The appearance of these newer and even more aberrant characters, like a television show introducing a more villainous heel in its second season, muted the indignation over Hegseth.”
“Obscured in this flurry of shocking appointments is the fact that Hegseth’s drawbacks are not limited to his light résumé or to the sexual-assault allegation made against him. Inexperienced though he may be at managing bureaucracies, Hegseth has devoted a great deal of time to documenting his worldview, including three books published in the past four years.”
“I spent the previous week reading them: The man who emerges from the page appears to have sunk deeply into conspiracy theories that are bizarre even by contemporary Republican standards but that have attracted strangely little attention. He considers himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trump’s left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.”
There is something darkly amusing that some Republicans think that Hegseth being a rapist disqualifies him from being Secretary of Defense,
However
Such does not disqualify Trump from being President.