As recently as Monday, some of the U.S. Senate’s most conservative members expressed relative indifference to the allegations surrounding Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host tapped by Donald Trump to lead the Defense Department. That might’ve been reassuring to the president-elect and his team, though an important problem lingered: Those conservative Senate Republicans didn’t speak for everyone.
On the contrary, just one day after NBC News reported on GOP senators “brushing aside” the allegations surrounding the controversial prospective nominee, NBC News published a related report on just how serious Hegseth’s political predicament has become.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, is in peril as Senate Republicans grow increasingly concerned over allegations of drinking and reports about his treatment of women. As many as six Senate Republicans, perhaps more, are currently not comfortable supporting Hegseth’s bid to lead the Pentagon as new revelations about his past continue to be made public, three Republican sources with direct knowledge of his nomination process said. Given Republicans’ slim Senate majority in the next Congress, Hegseth, a former Fox News host, can afford to lose only three GOP votes, assuming all Democrats vote against him.
As regular readers know, one of the most important numbers in American politics next year will be four — that’s the minimum number of Senate Republicans who have to balk in order to reject Trump’s most contentious nominees (assuming the incoming Senate Democratic minority is united in opposition).
If the latest reporting is correct and at least six GOP senators are disinclined to confirm Hegseth, his odds of leading the Pentagon appear bleak.
To be sure, political winds can shift direction quickly, and it’s still possible that the former Fox News host and Trump’s political operation will somehow turn things around on Capitol Hill. That task is made more difficult, however, as Hegseth, who’s denied any wrongdoing, confronts new allegations of personal misconduct.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told journalists that the recent reporting on Hegseth has been “very disturbing.” The South Carolinian added that the allegations will be “difficult” to overcome.
It’s against that backdrop that Politico reported that Hegseth’s prospective nomination is on “life support.”
Complicating matters, the president-elect is already reportedly eyeing a possible successor, with multiple news organizations, including NBC News, reporting that Trump is considering replacing Hegseth with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. I won’t pretend to have a crystal ball, but I’ve covered enough confirmation fights to know that once we reach the “scuttlebutt about potential replacements” phase, it suggests an embattled personnel choice is in real trouble. For his part, Hegseth responded to the whirlwind with an online statement issued by way of social media, claiming that that “the Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents.” He went on to claim that his critics are trying to “smear” him with stories that he described as “fake” and “BS.” Hegseth concluded, “Our warriors never back down [and] neither will I.” He made a related pitch in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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