White Nationalism, Sexual Assault & Corruption: Trump “Loyalist” Pete Hegseth Faces Senate Confirmation

AMY GOODMAN: The confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, begins today amidst backlash over his history of sexual assault, misusing funds in his previous positions, possible ties to white nationalists, and various violations committed while under the influence of alcohol. The hearing is expected to be contentious, but Democrats do not have the votes in the Senate to kill the nomination.

Two other confirmation hearings set for today were delayed to missing background paperwork: Trump’s pick for veterans affairs secretary, Doug Collins, and interior nominee, Governor Doug Burgum.

Pete Hegseth is a former Fox News host and military veteran. Democrats say the FBI’s background check failed to fully interview key witnesses, including Hegseth’s ex-wife. The New York Times reports she, quote, “made multiple attempts to contact the bureau for a more substantive discussion — but her calls were not returned,” unquote.

The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer reports Hegseth’s supporters have sought to intimidate potential witnesses from speaking out against him. Mayer also revealed a group of conservative billionaires, including Bill Koch and Richard Uihlein, plan to spend a million dollars to pressure Republican senators to support Hegseth. Jane Mayer previously reported Hegseth was forced out of leadership roles at two veterans groups for misusing funds, sexually harassing women and being repeatedly drunk on the job. In one incident, Hegseth drunkenly chanted “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” at a bar in 2015.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports Hegseth’s own mother once accused him of mistreating women. Hegseth has been a vocal opponent of the Pentagon’s embrace of multiculturalism and the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat. He laid out his views on the Shawn Ryan Show in November.

SHAWN RYAN: You don’t like women in combat.

PETE HEGSETH: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Why not?

PETE HEGSETH: I love women service members who contribute amazingly. Because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse. And when you actually go into the hood, again — and I — you know, I’ve gotten response — I’ve gotten 99% positive response to this. A few — a little bit of pushback. But when you actually break down what they did in the studies to open the door for women in combat, I mean, they just ignored them.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, CBS News reports Hegseth was one of 12 National Guard members removed as guards for President Biden’s 2021 inauguration over possible white nationalist extremist ties. Hegseth has tattoos associated with the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements, including what’s known as a Jerusalem cross, a symbol used by Christian nationalists.

For more, we’re joined by Alice Herman, politics and democracy reporter for The Guardian. Her piece is headlined “Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pentagon pick, sparks alarm over far-right extremism.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Alice. Why don’t you start off by just laying out what you know about Pete Hegseth, on this first day of his confirmation hearing?

ALICE HERMAN: Thank you so much for having me.

So, shortly after Trump picked Pete Hegseth for his nominee to head the Defense Department, I was hearing from expert sources on far-right extremism that there were things about Hegseth in his kind of public appearances, from the tattoos that he has inked on his body to statements that he’s made in podcasts and on Fox News to the multiple books that he’s published, that kind of raised alarm bells about possible ties to extremist groups or at least on a kind of affiliation or ideological alignment with the far right. And so, my reporting on Hegseth has focused mostly on those sort of public statements that he’s made and the ways that he, you know, presents himself on social media, from the content that he’s putting out there to the things that he’s saying, like I said, on podcasts and on the show that he used to host on Fox News.

What we know is that he really gives the impression of kind of a hypermasculine MAGA crusader. And he uses the term “crusades” himself, seemingly from a fascination with the Crusades. We know that he has a tattoo sleeve that features at least two tattoos that experts in white nationalism and the far right identified pretty quickly as being symbols that people on the far right, including Neo-Nazi groups, have used themselves. You know, we can get more into some of the things that he’s written in his books, but there’s a lot out there. And I think kind of the point that I want to make here is that in addition to the really great investigative work that has been done looking into accusations of sexual assault by Pete Hegseth to, you know, like you described, allegations of drunkenness at the workplace, he also has this very public kind of persona that will likely be interrogated during his Senate confirmation hearings today.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Pete Hegseth, in his own words, speaking on the Shawn Ryan Show about why he was deemed to be an extremist by the military.

PETE HEGSETH: I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C. And my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration. … When I was writing the book, I reached out to somebody in the unit who could confirm with 99.9% certainty, because he was on — in the meetings and on the emails, “Nope, someone inside the D.C. Guard trolled your social media, found a tattoo, used it as an excuse to call you a white nationalist, an extremist, and you were specifically, by name, orders revoked to guard the inauguration, because you are considered a potential threat.”

SHAWN RYAN: How is that? It’s a cross.

PETE HEGSETH: It’s a Christian symbol.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Alice Herman?

ALICE HERMAN: Sure. So, the two tattoos that — you know, that researchers and experts and historians kind of pointed to as like a red flag for extremism were the Jerusalem cross tattoo that he has on his chest and the words ”Deus vult” that he has tattooed on his bicep. ”Deus vult” means “God wills it” in Latin, and both are rooted in the Crusades. And both are widely popular among — neither are widely popular among Christians today, but they’re both associated with far-right and Neo-Nazi groups, which have used the symbols.

And so, of course, Hegseth can claim some plausible deniability. Like, not every single person who takes an interest in the Crusades or an interest in one of these symbols is necessarily affiliated with a far-right group. But given the fact that he has both, the scholars and historians that I spoke with felt that that seemed to indicate, at the very least, an alliance or an ideological kind of alignment with white nationalist and Christian nationalist subcultures.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the part of the article where you write, “Much of Hegseth’s social media content is promotional. He regularly advertises an ammunition company, a coffee company and the pro-gun group Right to Bear on Instagram.” In November 2023, “he promoted an Advent songbook published by the Forge Press, which is described on its website as an organization that ‘arms Christians with weapons to build, defend, and expand the new Christendom’.” Talk more about this.

ALICE HERMAN: Sure. So, yeah, if you look through his — and from what I can tell, he hasn’t — you know, he and his team, whoever’s kind of helping him prepare for this confirmation hearing, hasn’t changed his social media presence, at least from what I can tell. And so, if you look through, like, his Instagram account, you can see that he spends a lot of time advertising for a pro-gun coffee company. He advertises for a company that sells silencers for guns. He advertises, like you mentioned, for — he advertises for a company called the Forge Press, which is a Christian nationalist company that has a podcast, and they also sell merch, you know, things like hats that say “make America Christian again” and things like that. And so, you know, you can always kind of get a sense of the ideological leanings of a content creator based on who they’re platforming and who they’re promoting.

AMY GOODMAN: And his position on women in the military? I mean, he’s going to be before people like Senator Tammy Duckworth, whose legs were blown off in Iraq. You have Elizabeth Warren, who has just written a multipage, what, 33-page report, a sort of case against Hegseth on this issue, women in the military, on his campaign against so-called woke generals, to throw them out of office, you know, clean house.

ALICE HERMAN: Yeah, that’s right. So, in his 2024 book, which is called War on Warriors, he says that the military — well, first, he kind of opens his book with an anecdote, that you described earlier, about the military allegedly not — the Army not calling on him to serve during Biden’s inauguration amid concerns about the tattoos that we had discussed. And then he goes on to, you know, write about how he doesn’t think that the military should be focused on or even engaging in rooting out extremism within the ranks.

And he locates diversity, equity and inclusion principles in the military as a problem. He sees efforts to promote women and people of color and LGBT people in the military as extremely problematic, and he suggests that the promotion of minorities within the ranks is the result of preferential treatment and not merit. And yeah, he speaks this pretty — writes pretty disparagingly about women and LGBT people and people of color in the military in that book. It’s kind of one — it’s one of his central claims.

AMY GOODMAN: You speak with a number of historians who say purging generals constitutes a coup.

ALICE HERMAN: Yeah. In that same book, he proposes purging “woke” — in his words — “woke” generals from the military as a solution to this problem that he identifies or that he claims the military has with embracing, like I said, DEI principles. And it’s true that the historians that I spoke with described that as being tantamount to a coup.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what does the military gain by having him at the helm? As one senator pointed out, he hasn’t been in charge of any group larger than 40 people, his platoon. We’re talking about 3 million people in the military.

ALICE HERMAN: I think that — I think that the Trump administration would stand to gain a loyalist. And even in the transition’s own communications, they have emphasized his total alignment with Trump’s vision and loyalty to Trump. So I think that — I think that is what the military stands to gain if he is confirmed.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Herman, we want to thank you for being with us, politics and democracy reporter for The Guardian. We’ll link to your piece, “Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pentagon pick, sparks alarm over far-right extremism.” We’ll revisit this hearing tomorrow, after the first day of confirmation hearings today.

Next up, as Gaza ceasefire talks continue, we’ll look at President Joe Biden’s defense of his foreign policy in his major State Department address yesterday. We’ll go to Jerusalem to speak with Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Sankofa Visions” by Charles M. Murrell III. On Monday, a federal judge ordered the white supremacist group Patriot Front and its leader to pay the musician some $2.8 million for attacking him in Boston in 2022.