Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Exhibits the Senate’s Slow Decline
Plus: How do California Republicans feel about conditioning aid for wildfire victims?
Secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth faced tough questioning from Democrats during his confirmation hearing this morning, and while it’s important that they pressed him to secure information and put his responses on record, the fate of his nomination will probably not change as a result, no matter how much content was created for cable news and the social media feeds of those who consider him unfit for the role. It may sound cynical, but in the post–Brett Kavanaugh era, excoriating a conservative on C-SPAN for their alleged transgressions—up to and including the outright abuse of women—just isn’t enough to tank their chances for a major government appointment. The new standard of a nominee’s suitability is whether Donald Trump wants him or her in office. That’s it.
Hegseth could very likely lose a few Republicans, but not enough to sink his nomination on the floor, and he probably won’t lose a single one in the committee stage. This was apparent Tuesday morning, as Democrats pushed Hegseth on allegations sexual assault, infidelity, and drunkeness on the job. Republican responses were various, ranging from a “who among us?” defense to asking Hegseth how many pushups he could do.
In general, Republicans were displeased with their Democratic colleagues’ line of questioning about Hegseth’s character. Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told me of Democrats’ strategy, “I don’t think they laid a glove, frankly.”
“Clearly they’re not gonna vote for him,” Wicker added. “But I think the most important audience was the American people and I think they have to be impressed. I was impressed.”
When I followed up by asking Wicker whether questions about Hegseth’s character were valid, he gave an unequivocal “no.”
“Clearly he’s had marital problems,” Wicker said. “Clearly there have been problems in the past. I think he’s overcome them.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) took issue with the idea that questions of Hegseth’s personal morality and conduct were not fair game.
“Tell me what was upsetting about it,” he said. “I mean, if they’re upset because it’s irrelevant that he cheated on his wife and on the mother of the child with somebody, maybe they think it’s irrelevant. I think it’s relevant. The [secretary of defense] should have character.”
Beyond his alleged personal improprieties, which range from sexual assault to reports of alcohol abuse in work settings, there’s no shortage of conflicts of interest. Hegseth’s introduction to the committee even came from his shepherd, former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Regular readers might recall that Coleman, while greasing the skids on Capitol Hill for Hegseth, is an active lobbyist for foreign governments and corporations with business interests before the Defense Department.
Hegseth dropped his financial disclosure report Monday afternoon, which revealed a Fox News salary of more than $2 million alongside a slew of lucrative speaking engagements with organizations that span the gamut from private Christian schools to the National Rifle Association, which sent Hegseth a check for $25,000 for a single speech amid its long, continuous descent into deep financial and legal trouble.
The financial disclosure report also shed light on Fox News’s well-documented history of looking the other way when its on-air talent engages in blatant political activity. During the 2024 election cycle, Hegseth collected a $20,000 honorarium from Point of Friction PAC, a conservative super PAC. He also gave paid speeches for the Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, and other political advocacy organizations.
But none of that matters, at least to the Republicans whose job it is to assess Hegseth’s fitness to oversee the world’s largest military and one of the federal government’s most critical—and complex—agencies.
Democrats dutifully huddled Monday afternoon with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to work out their lines of attack against Hegseth, but any hits they land against his nomination will be above the waterline. The thing that keeps the ship afloat is not vulnerable to arguments from Democratic senators. Working diligently and carefully to gauge the fitness of appointees to the most consequential roles in an incoming administration is an important duty for U.S. senators. But in today’s Senate, that duty has given way to partisan imperatives.
Americans have a lot of disdain for the way Congress works. They would do well to think about the character of the individuals they elected to send to Washington, because those are the people who have turned the legislative branch into what it is today: an aging, cynical, and nakedly partisan institution without any interest in due diligence.
Petey Uomo
A lot of men like to proclaim that they don’t care about clothes or that their individual clothing choices do not matter to them. People who say this are not thinking clearly about what they mean. As menswear writer Derek Guy aptly put it:
Ultimately, clothing is a way for us to signal our belonging to a group, as well as our individuality within a group. Even men who pretend to not care about clothing know this. If given a choice between pink and blue jeans, most will have a preference.
I would go a step further. Most men would pay over MSRP for a pair of blue jeans before they’d opt for a free pair of pink jeans—I know I would. (I am not opposed to pink pants on principle; I just know they’re not for me.)
This brings us back to Pete Hegseth, who made a series of wardrobe choices with the care and specificity of a Hollywood costume supervisor to make sure MAGA men and self-proclaimed patriots tuning in to his confirmation hearing understood that the man on the screen is on their side.
Perhaps taking a cue from Trump, Hegseth is Disneybounding Old Glory: Today found him in a cobalt blue suit, starched white shirt, and red tie with stripes. The cut of the suit is on the skinny side of slim (read: ill-fitting), which, like his politics, makes a show of his aggressively bad taste. His pocket square is a miniature American flag. What ever happened to Republican outrage over flag code violations?
In his most recent book, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change, author W. David Marx examines the many arbitrary signs human beings use to indicate the groups they belong to or the groups whose approval they seek. This is what Hegseth is doing: signaling to sympathetic senators and the MAGA faithful that he is an avatar of their cause, the ultimate patriot. Some might pick up on it subliminally; others may openly fawn over it.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) sent a sartorial signal of his own this morning, albeit more subtly: He wore a dual U.S.-Ukrainian flag lapel pin to show that despite his support for a president-elect and defense secretary nominee who oppose continuing support for the Ukrainians in their war against Russia, he remains a steadfast advocate of their cause. A bit of a mixed signal, perhaps.
Clothing and accessory choices matter, as much as we like to pretend they do not. Sometimes it’s just a bit more obvious how and why they do.
Feel the burn
Last night, I reported from the Capitol that even California Republicans are getting on board with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal to place policy conditions on any future aid package to California as they deal with the still-ongoing L.A. wildfires, which have now displaced thousands and killed dozens.
“Well, I think it would be a mistake to grant money to the very same people responsible for the policies that have produced this disaster,” Rep. Tom McClintock told The Bulwark.
McClintock represents a wildfire-prone district that hasn’t yet been affected by the recent disaster. Asked why he would support conditions for residents of his own state, he said being a Californian “makes me one of the victims of these policies.”
“The policies of the elected officials in California hasn’t been fair to the residents, it’s been downright dangerous to [them],” he said.
Not every California Republican was on board, as Rep. Young Kim, whose Orange County district is significantly closer to the current fires (but coincidentally is less fire-prone than McClintock’s), told me she needs to see details of the proposed conditions on the aid, but she added that residents’ safety and recovery is paramount.
Whether lawmakers go along with something early on can indicate how the process will unfold. That some Republicans are willing to throw their fellow Californians under the bus doesn’t bode well for the state’s eventual aid package.
Pitti party
Today is the first day of Pitti Uomo, the semiannual menswear trade show in Florence, Italy. While I’ll be spending the week reporting on Trump’s cabinet confirmations,1 I’ll also be keeping an eye on things over there and offering you whatever might be of interest to Press Pass readers.
As Pitti kicks off an early-spring run of events that will include fashion weeks across Europe and the United States, I’m feeling optimistic that we’ll see a lot of things that will help pull us out of the fashion rut of the last several years. And I’m not the only one.
New York Times journalist Vanessa Friedman wrote Monday that a “seismic shift” in new designers heading the most prestigious fashion houses has primed the industry for a creative shake-up.
There is a tendency, in such an environment, to play it safe. To fall back into the comfort of a camel coat and assume that what sold well in the past will sell well in the future. To focus on the commercial over the creative. . . .
Fashion is essentially a story of what the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge called “punctuated equilibrium,” a theory positing that significant change comes in spurts that interrupt lengthy periods of stability or slow evolution. It’s how we got L.B.D.s, the New Look, pants, the possibilities of destruction.
Out of chaos came creativity. That’s where we are now: at a mass inflection point when the world order is in flux, social mores are shifting, the A.I. era is dawning and it’s not clear how everything will be resolved. The first quarter of the 21st century, with the ascent of streetwear and athleisure, is over. There is a hunger for the defining next.
I couldn’t agree more. Read the whole thing.
Please sound off in the comments about the need for a Bulwark Italia office.
Let’s put the allegations of excessive boozing and assault aside, he has never run anything! Amazing.
Agree about the “post-Brett Kavanaugh era” … but would like to suggest it really began with Clarence Thomas - chosen by ironyless Republicans as their answer to the majestic Thurgood Marshall - and his (Thomas’s) deceitful responses and puffed-up indignation.