Pete Hegseth grossly under qualified for secretary of defense

As early as Monday, the Senate will vote on whether or not to confirm Pete Hegseth as the next secretary of defense. The secretary of defense oversees the Defense Department, acting as the principal defense policy maker and advisor.

The confirmation hearing began Tuesday and has featured a variety of tough and easy questions for the candidate. Hegseth denies many of the personal allegations against him as false anonymous claims. These include sexual assault, sexual harassment, violence, cheating and more.

If I write about these allegations, anonymous or otherwise, those in favor of Hegseth will follow his lead, claiming them to be untrue. So I’d prefer to deal in the things Hegseth himself has said, written or refused to say.

When joining the military, one agrees to hold themselves to a higher moral standard. This includes not only obeying state and federal laws but also following the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Article 134 makes it a crime for military personnel to engage in sexual conduct with someone who is not their spouse.

That’s right. In the military, cheating can result in serious consequences including dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and up to one year of jail time.

While there are allegations of Hegseth having five affairs while married to his first wife, there’s no actual evidence of him confirming this. So let’s talk about when he was married to his second wife. A woman (not his wife) accused him of sexually assaulting her in a California hotel room in 2017. Hegseth’s response was that the incident was consensual and he paid his accuser an undisclosed amount in 2023 as part of a settlement agreement.

While he denies sexually assaulting the woman, he admits to the affair. This offense violates the UCMJ and yet he seeks to lead a group of men and women he’s asking to maintain high moral standards.

One non-answer that alarmed me during the hearing was when Senator Tim Kaine asked whether someone who has committed a sexual assault is disqualified from serving as secretary of defense. Hegseth would not answer the question.

Poor treatment and opinion of women is part of the backbone of Hegseth’s core values. He’s written several books and they all contain a myriad of alarming ideas. Let me just lay out some of these quotes for you.

“I’m going to say something politically incorrect that is a perfectly commonsensical observation. Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bike. We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units.”

“Diversity is not our strength, unity is.”

“Women should not be in combat roles because men are distracted by women.”

After being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump, he changed his tune saying, “Some of our greatest warriors are women,” and that he supports having women in combat.

There’s nothing wrong with someone changing their mind, but this comment came only 32 days after on “The Shawn Ryan Show” he said, “I’m straight up just saying we shouldn’t have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, it hasn’t made us more lethal, it has made fighting more complicated.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed this out at the hearing, noting the 32 day difference in a massive change of opinion.

Our Senator, Joni Ernst, listed her top three priorities for the DOD — A clean audit, women in combat and combatting sexual assault in the military. She then said she has had frank conversations with Hegseth about his opinion, but apparently everything he’s said over the last decade is being swept under the rug.

There are 500,000 women in the military who will have to blindly believe Hegseth has had a massive change of heart in a month’s time or their jobs could be at stake.

As for her first priority, the DOD is the only federal agency that has never passed an audit. This is a major issue and one that needs to be rectified with our next secretary of defense.

Hegseth has never managed more than 100 people and financial documents show his expenses exceeded revenues at both the Concerned Veterans for America and at Veterans for Freedom, an organization forced to merge as it was on the edge of bankruptcy.

Ernst asked Hegseth what steps he would take to ensure the DOD passes its audit in 2028 and Hegseth said it hasn’t been a priority in the past and he knows it’s a priority. That’s it. He had a soft question he could use to explain what his plans are and he has nothing. Maybe as Trump once said, he has “concepts of a plan.”

I could honestly spend another 800 words talking about the ways in which he is unqualified, but let me just rapid fire some more alarming quotes at you.

In his book he asked if we should be following the Geneva Convention, saying it would be better if we just fought wars our own way. This would cause us an extreme loss of allies.

He only met with one Democratic member of the Senate committee while it is a non-partisan tradition to meet with all members.

In his book, he said it would be a bad thing if they trained men to treat women equally on the battlefield because then they will treat them equally at home.

Lastly, I found this most telling. This is Senator Jack Reed’s ninth secretary of defense confirmation hearing. “I’ve voted in favor of all of your predecessors including those from the Trump administration,” Reed said. “Unfortunately, you lack the character, composure and competence to hold the position.”