It's important to remember that screw-up Pete Hegseth is SECDEF because of J. D. Vance

 

... Vice President Vance had to break a tie vote to get Hegseth confirmed after three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — voted no. ...

More.

There's already been a lawsuit filed against Hegseth et alia in Signalgate, and Judge Boasberg won the lottery lol

 

The Atlantic calls Trump's bluff and publishes full Signal thread sent to its editor by mistake by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz

 The Atlantic publishes full Signal thread with Hegseth, Waltz after Trump says texts not classified

... Goldberg in Wednesday’s report wrote: “If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds.”

“The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic,” he wrote. ...

I guess we'll just have to have a Fourth Reich, then, armed to the teeth with nukes: Millennials Pete Hegseth and J. D. Vance think the Europeans are freeloaders

 

In the chats, the user identified as Vice President JD Vance expresses concerns about the strikes but ultimately agrees to go along with US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth's plan - before adding 'I just hate bailing Europe out again.'

Hegseth responds: 'I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC.' 

And of course they want to throw Mike Waltz under the bus:

There are claims that Mr Waltz is facing the sack over the saga - as he's believed to have been the official who 'added the editor-in-chief [of The Atlantic] to the group'.

One source told Politico: 'Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f***ing idiot.'

The Financial Times reports that privately some German officials are starting to wonder out loud whether the time has come to acquire their own nuclear arsenal.

Incompetent Pete Hegseth, or was he drunk?, texted US Houthi attack plan to The Atlantic's Jeff Goldberg just hours before it was launched on March 15

 The Ides of March will get you every time.

 

 

 

Pete Hegseth, blackout drunk

 

Beer-swilling surrender monkey SECDEF Pete Hegseth stands by his original comments yesterday and doubles down on them today

 No return to pre-2014 borders for Ukraine.

No NATO membership for Ukraine.

No US troops for Ukraine (like Biden ever wanted that).

 

 

That's exactly what it is, you beer-swilling surrender monkey

 

 Trump's peace push 'not a betrayal' of Ukraine, Hegseth says

The beer-swilling surrender monkeys of the Trump administration have just caved to Putin

 The art of the cave.

The art of the deal would drop NATO membership for a return of the occupied lands, but no, let's concede EVERYTHING for . . . what exactly?

A cessation of hostilities?

These people are a joke and a disgrace.

 

 

I don't trust either of these guys as far as I can throw them

 

In 2016 J. D. Vance and Pete Hegseth were both conventional NeverTrumpers, and had not been particularly religious.

Hegseth was for Marco Rubio in 2015-16 originally, and then for Ted Cruz before acquiescing to Trump. Vance didn't come around to Trump until 2021, whom he needed in his run for US Senate in 2022 from Ohio.

 

Pete supposedly had a religious transformation in 2018, according to new Wikipedia information, which however contradicts itself:

 

"He has said that he underwent a religious transformation in 2018 following his marriage to his third wife" but

 

"Hegseth and Rauchet, who has three young children from her first marriage, married on August 16, 2019."

 

Oops. Sounds like it was more like 2019, but who really knows? Wikipedia only found out yesterday that Hegseth was born on June 6, 1980. How does this country approve a SECDEF without knowing until now when he was even born?

 

Meanwhile J. D. converted to Catholicism in 2019, what a coincidence, but was an atheist roughly until he was in law school at Yale during the first Obama administration. His "faith" is primarily intellectual by his own admission.

 

And now look at the two of 'em lol.

 

Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas who lick their fingers, stick them in the air, and check whichaway the wind comin' from uh huh.

 

 

 

Pete Hegseth is confirmed to SECDEF 51-50, VP Vance breaks 50-50 tie

 

Republican Senators Murkowski, Collins, and McConnell voted against Pete Hegseth, necessitating the tie-breaking vote from Vice President J. D. Vance.

Hell of a hill for Vance to die on.

Sad!

Hegseth advances to a final vote with 51-49 vote to end debate, with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voting against him

 Pete Hegseth’s nomination to lead the Pentagon clears a key hurdle in the Senate

I find myself in small company agreeing with two of the most liberal Republicans in the US Senate, but that's what's become of the men.

OK, she's right, good for her

 Sen. Lisa Murkowski to vote against Hegseth, first Republican to oppose a Trump Cabinet pick 

... senators have remained doubtful of his experience and abilities and the alleged behavior that could lead to reprimand or firing for military personnel he would now be expected to lead. ...

Like Pete Hegseth, the early Americans were strong boozers

 

"ED: What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about American history?

"SY: I first came across W. J. Rorabaugh’s Alcoholic Republic as a graduate student, and it completely changed the way I thought about early American history. From 1790–1840, average alcohol consumption in America peaked at 7.1 gallons of distilled liquor per capita, over three times today’s consumption rate. When I share this fact with my students, it helps explain two important developments: first, the pervasiveness of violence in antebellum America. Alcohol fueled the mobs, riots, lynchings, vandalism, and duals that threatened the nation’s growing urban areas and the often lawless frontiers. Second, the appeal of the temperance movement. My students often scoff at the 18th Amendment and the failures of Prohibition, but temperance had broad popular appeal as a social cause precisely because alcohol was a pressing problem in the nineteenth century. Most Americans knew someone whose drinking had led to domestic violence, suicide, or poverty."

More.

Pete Hegseth reportedly has had episodes of drinking to the point of passing out

 

 I get the drinking too much until you barf. I mean, that's pretty much been Freshman Life 101 forever and a day. Pete was a freshman in college in 1999-2000.

But it takes a special kind of excess to drink until you pass out.

Is it true? 

Who knows.

One incident was allegedly in 2013, when he was about 32, at which time he had earned an MA from Harvard. Another was when he was about 28, in 2009, when his first marriage ended. That's a long time after graduating from Princeton University in 2003.

The precise timeline is uncertain because his birth year isn't precisely known, and the new revelations come from a former sister in law, married to Pete's brother from 2011-2019, who can't remember the dates exactly.

Anyway, I don't get why the new SECDEF absolutely, positively must be this guy, with all this sooty baggage. No one is that indispensable.

From The Wall Street Journal here:

Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, regularly abused alcohol to the point that he passed out at family gatherings, and once needed to be dragged out of a strip club while in uniform, according to an ex-relative’s account of his behavior that was given to U.S. lawmakers and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The sworn statement, submitted in response to a request from Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was signed by Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth. It states that she was with Hegseth when he passed out from drunkenness in the bathroom of a bar in Minneapolis in about 2013. It also describes another night, when she said Hegseth drank so much at a restaurant in Minneapolis that the Uber driver had to pull over on Interstate 94 so he could throw up.

In her sworn statement, Danielle Hegseth said she personally observed erratic and aggressive behavior by Hegseth, witnessing him abusing alcohol multiple times over the years. One Christmas in 2008 or 2009, he drank so much that he threw up and passed out, she said. ...

Senate panel advances Defense secretary nominee Hegseth on party-line vote 14-13

 The Hill reported here yesterday at 5:37pm.

Degeneracy is a spectrum

 

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FBI failed to investigate Pete Hegseth, GOP Senators afraid of being primaried just fine with it

 A gross dereliction of duty on the part of the Republican-controlled Senate and the Trump-directed FBI. That is a harsh but unavoidable assessment of the confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth to serve as Donald Trump’s defense secretary. ...

Only [Senators] Wicker and Reed were permitted to review an FBI report that Reed described as “insufficient.” The FBI failed to question Hegseth’s second wife, despite her expressed interest in being interviewed. It didn’t speak to the woman who accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her — and was paid by him in exchange for executing a nondisclosure agreement. It didn’t obtain the forensic audit of a veteran’s organization Hegseth ran that found “evidence of gross financial mismanagement.”

Mayer reported that “the F.B.I.’s background investigation also failed to interview Fox News personnel who had described Hegseth to NBC News as smelling of alcohol on the job as recently as last fall. Instead, sources say that the Bureau settled for an interview with a public-relations official at Fox.”

The FBI’s role here is troubling, because the bureau is supposed to serve as the Senate’s chief source of reported and reliable information about the individuals whose nominations it is considering. ...

The bureau has argued that the scope of its inquiries is limited by the directions it is given, in this case by the Trump transition team. But the Trump team’s goal is to win confirmation, not to get to the truth of the matter — which makes a Trump-directed FBI investigation worse than meaningless; it makes it effectively a coverup.

More.

Senator Tim Kaine v Pete Hegseth

 

I don't care what you think of Senator Tim Kaine, D-VA, he nailed Pete Hegseth's unrepentant ass to the canvass

 

 Pete Hegseth is no repentant Christian. He's a phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.

This man represents a new low for the GOP.

From the story here:

“I want to return to the incident that you referenced a minute ago that occurred in Monterey, California, in October 2017,” Kaine opened. “At that time, you were still married to your second wife, correct?” 

After Hegseth agreed that he believed so, Kaine followed with “And you had just fathered a child by a woman who would later become your third wife, correct?”

“Senator, I was falsely charged and I fully. investigated and completely cleared,” Hegseth said of the sexual assault allegation, but Kaine pressed.

“So you think you are completely cleared because you committed no crime? That’s your definition of cleared?” Kaine pressed. “You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. I am shocked that you would stand here and say you are completely cleared. Can you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child who had been born two months before? And you tell us you are completely cleared. So how is that completely cleared?”

“Senator, her child’s name is Gwendolyn Hope Hegseth, and she’s a child of God, and she’s seven years old,” Hegseth replied.

“I mean, you cheated on the mother of that child less than two months after that daughter was born, didn’t you?” Kaine pressed. 

 “Those were false charges. Well, no, totally investigated. And I was completely cleared. And I’m so grateful for the marriage I have to this day,” Hegseth answered.

“So you’ve admitted that you had sex at that hotel in October 2017. You said it was consensual. Isn’t that correct?” Kaine continued. “You’ve admitted that it was consensual, and you were still married, and you just had a child by another woman again. How do you explain yourself?”

“Completely false charges against me,” Hegseth insisted, even though he agreed to a non-disclosure agreement and financial settlement with his accuser.