By The American Tribune | Created at 2025-01-18 11:01:09 | Updated at 2025-01-20 17:02:45
2 days ago
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, reportedly has sufficient votes to be confirmed by the Senate. Hegseth’s appointment faced obstacles in the weeks after Trump’s appointment due to anonymous, unproven allegations about sexual assault and alcohol abuse that shook the confidence of some within the Republican Party.
However, it appears one of the key holdouts, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) has indicated that he will be supporting Hegseth, ensuring enough votes to successfully confirm him as the Secretary of Defense. Hegseth faced other potential holdouts from senators such as Joni Ernst (R-IA), who was concerned about the allegations brought against him. However, she indicate earlier this week she would also vote for him.
“After four years of weakness in the White House, Americans deserve a strong Secretary of Defense,” Ernst recently said. “Our next commander in chief selected Pete Hegseth to serve in this role, and after our conversations, hearing from Iowans, and doing my job as a United States Senator, I will support President Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense. As I serve on the Armed Services Committee, I will work with Pete to create the most lethal fighting force and hold him to his commitments of auditing the Pentagon, ensuring opportunity for women in combat while maintaining high standards, and selecting a senior official to address and prevent sexual assault in the ranks.”
Earlier this week, Hegseth appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee where he was grilled by congressional Democrats. However, after his remarks before the Senate, Hegseth’s odds of confirmation shot up to 90 percent on the on the betting platform Polymarket, which accurate predicted the presidential election.
The American Tribune reported on part of the hearing in which Hegseth sounded off on the “coordinated smear campaign” waged against him. The topic was broached by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who said, “Let’s get into this allegation about sexual assault, inappropriate workplace behavior, alcohol abuse, and financial mismanagement during your time as a nonprofit executive. I should note that the majority of these have come from anonymous sources in liberal media publications. But I want to give you an opportunity to respond to these allegations, sir.”
In response, Hegseth called out the smear campaign, stating, “Mr. Chairman, Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for that opportunity. You are correct. We undertook this responsibility with an obligation to the troops to do right by them for our warfighters. And what became very evident to us from the beginning, there was a coordinated smear campaign orchestrated in the media against us.”
Hegseth noted that the attacks were attempts to discredit Trump and were all anonymous and unproven. “That was clear from moment one. And what we knew is that it wasn’t about me. Most of it was about President Donald Trump, who’s had to endure the very same thing for much longer amounts of time. And he endured it incredibly, incredibly strong ways,” he said. “So we in some ways knew it was coming. We didn’t understand the depth of the dishonesty that would come with it. I saw from story after story in the media, left-wing media, we saw anonymous source after anonymous source based on second or third-hand accounts.”
Watch the rest of Hegseth’s comments below:
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pete_Hegseth_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg
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