‘Without Question’: Hegseth Now Expected To Cruise To Confirmation, GOP Senators Say

Just 24 hours after cruising through his confirmation hearing, Pete Hegseth is believed to easily have won over a majority of U.S. senators and will soon head up the U.S. Department of Defense, according to two members.

Tuesday’s contentious hearing saw President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee spar with Democrats like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), creating made-for-TV moments that appear to have only helped make his case. Despite an onslaught of negative coverage by the mainstream media, Hegseth, a former Army National Guard Member, has continued to fight back against allegations of drinking on the job and harassing female subordinates in previous roles. His approach has garnered deep appreciation from MAGA supporters who, like Trump, want his most embattled nominees to stand their ground, and along the way Hegseth has also won support from formerly skeptical GOP senators like Joni Ernst (R-IA), herself a combat veteran who is said to have questioned the defense nominee on his belief about women serving in combat roles. The issue was front and center as Gillibrand and Warren screeched about his alleged hypocrisy on female service members since being nominated in November.

But the way Hegseth handled the inquisition was all the convincing Republican senators keen to curry favor with Trump needed to see to confirm him when the full Senate votes on his nomination as soon as next week. Appearing on Fox News, Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) told host Laura Ingraham that Hegseth should feel good about his chances. “I believe, without question, Pete’s going to be confirmed, and I think you’re going to have strong support from all the Republicans, men and women alike,” Mullin said. “I think he is the right person for the job, and President Trump did a wonderful job by picking him to be the next secretary of defense.” The Oklahoma senator also praised Sen. Ernst for coming around on Hegseth, who said on a podcast in November that the U.S. “should not have women in combat roles.”

A staunch conservative, Cotton railed against “political correctness” creeping into the U.S. military and credited Hegseth for touting his focus to return the Pentagon to a war-fighting posture, not a virtue-signaling institution. “I hope the Democrats will not delay or otherwise obstruct this nomination. If they want to vote against him, that’s fine, but President Trump deserves to have his secretary of defense on the job properly,” Cotton said on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” adding “social engineering” has “run amok” in the military. “It’s probably declined recruiting numbers to the point that we’re at a recruiting crisis and it’s harmed readiness. Look, our troops don’t deserve their pronouns on their ID tags. They don’t need to do privilege walks. They don’t have to go through repeated training sessions about diversity, equity and inclusion,” Cotton continued. “What they deserve is hard, realistic training to help prepare them to defend this nation at wartime. The kind of training that Pete Hegseth has conducted and that he’s run.”