By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2024-12-10 22:39:11 | Updated at 2024-12-26 03:52:39
2 weeks ago
If Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, gets through, “they all get through,” Breitbart News’s Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle predicted during an appearance on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered, describing Hegseth as the “tip of the spear.”
Don Jr. asked Boyle to walk listeners through the latest on the confirmation process.
“It seems like people are coming back around to the mandate that the American people really showed on November 5,” Trump Jr. said.
“I think Hegseth is really the tip of the spear here in that … how he led his guys into war, into battle. He’s leading Trump’s cabinet picks into confirmation here,” Boyle began. “I very much feel like he’s the tip of the spear. If he gets through, they all get through.
“And if he doesn’t, if the swamp gets him, then I think that, you know, some of the other picks are going to have a really tough time,” he said, noting that things were looking “pretty dark” for Hegseth, but he started fighting and turned it right around.
“How do you do it? He started fighting right,? Like, I mean, he wrote. He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He did an interview with Megyn Kelly, which was fantastic. And he’s been taking the message directly into meetings with senators, and he’s winning them over one by one. They’re all seeing the same thing your dad did in Pete, and many of these senators have known him for a long time, you know? They know Concerned Veterans for America. When you see these as fake establishment media attacks with — all based on anonymous sources, it’s backfiring in a big way,” Boyle said, adding that these hoaxes and smears are not new to these lawmakers, using the messy Brett Kavanaugh confirmation as an example.
“They know what it’s like, having gone through all of this stuff. And I think that having gone through a lot of these hoaxes and smears from the established media, I was watching the opening of your show there, where you’re talking about the established media — they’ve never been weaker,” Boyle said, adding that the establishment media has “lost so much influence.”
“They tried tanking a guy,” Trump responded. “He has two Bronze Stars. So they’re like, he’s not qualified. I’m looking at Lloyd Austin, and, you know, triple masked. I’m saying, I don’t know.”
Boyle noted that Hegseth made even more progress on Monday after meeting with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) again.
“I think this was their third conversation and their second in-person meeting, and then Senator Ernst came out and said that she’s backing Pete Hegseth, and she doesn’t believe the anonymous sources,” Boyle said. “And, you know, it set the stage for a yes vote here, right? Like, so she didn’t explicitly say yes vote, but let’s put it this way: She’s voting yes after that statement tonight.”
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Boyle also walked through how this confirmation process will go in the coming weeks, beginning when the new Senate takes office January 3.
“Then the next day, they start getting to work, right? Then the date that’s been burned into our minds forever since four years ago, January 6, is when the Electoral College will meet with the Congress, and the Congress will certify your father’s victory, obviously, in this, in this election, and then probably sometime in the time frame thereafter, into January 20, which is Inauguration Day, you will see confirmation hearings before the relevant committees for these various nominees,” he said.
“So what you’ll see is Pete Hegseth go before Armed Services. You’ll see Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, etc. go before Judiciary. You’ll see Marco Rubio go before Foreign Affairs and so on and so forth, right? They all go before the relevant committees. The committees will hold the confirmation hearing,” he said, noting they will be televised.
“And then the committees themselves will hold the vote on whether or not to approve the nominees. Usually, if you get to that point, the committees, because it’s a Republican-controlled Senate, are going to pass the nominees. And after that happens, then your dad gets sworn in at noon on January 20 as the 47th president the United States, and then sometime in the hours thereafter, the most critical national security-focused nominees are going to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate,” he said. “Usually they’re going to do Secretary of Defense first,” because you “need to have the Pentagon operational and functional as fast and as quickly as possible” when going from one government to another.
“So they’re usually going to confirm like that afternoon or that evening. So when the rest of us are going off to inaugural balls or going around the town in D.C. and celebrating the huge moment of Donald Trump becoming the 47th president, again, the U.S. Senate’s going to be in all afternoon and evening confirming Donald Trump’s various picks — especially the national security-focused ones,” he said, noting that likely includes the Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, and Director of National Intelligence.
“Then over the course of the next week or so, you’ll see, maybe the next couple of weeks, some of the other ones, like Treasury Secretary, HHS … so on and so forth,” he added.
