Regarding Pete Hegseth
Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has a couple of Minnesota connections. One is that he was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Forest Lake. Another is that he tried to win the GOP nomination to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2012. He dropped out before the primary. Incidentally, I hadn’t seen or heard the name “Kurt Bills” in quite a long time.
None of which has anything to do with why he’s currently getting a lot of attention. From December:
But will they ask him about those tattoos and his Crusader moods, which need to be addressed, but who knows? If he is not a Christian Nationalist bent on Islam as a perceived evil to be actively eradicated to where he’d attack, I am better able to listen to more other stuff. My litmus test is a super big distrust of that body art as an expression of things I reject as defective and/or extreme thought.
I would rather the Senate turn him down, but I expect the opposite result.
(Developers Are Crabgrass)
It does indeed look like he’ll be confirmed.
As with many of Trump’s cabinet picks he chose someone he feels comfortable with personally. He’s presumably confident that Hegseth will never, for example, brutally bad-mouth him the way many high-ranking officials from his first term have. Nor is he ever likely to behave with anything but groveling servitude in Trump’s presence, even if he (Hegseth) has “had a few.” (By the way, if Hegseth is an alcoholic, the odds of his being able to handle a high-profile, high-pressure job while staying dry by willpower alone probably aren’t great.) In Trump’s deranged world that’s ample qualification.
Do all Party of Trump U.S. Senators really think this is a great idea? Or are many, or at least some, rationalizing their votes with the belief that there are enough “checks and balances” in place to keep the incompetent, delusional likes of Hegseth (and potentially RFK Jr., Gabbard, etc.) from doing real damage? Personally, I’m not sure.
The big question for me is whether the conscious intent is for Hegseth to be pretty much just a figurehead, or whether he’ll actually try bossing, meddling, and sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. And if so, do they expect the generals and admirals to put up with that? I’m not sure about that one, either.
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