UPDATE 1.24.25: The final vote for Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense is set for today. Fox News reports:
Pete Hegseth cleared a procedural hurdle Thursday for a final Senate vote to advance his confirmation to lead the Department of Defense, setting up a high-stakes showdown.
A motion to invoke cloture, or begin up to 30 hours of debate, passed 51-49. Republican Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted no on advancing Hegseth’s confirmation, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted yes.
Read more here.
Originally posted January 15, 2025.
Americans elected Donald Trump because they wanted to change the Washington, D.C. paradigm. They aren’t looking for more go-along-to-get-along bureaucrats and lobbyists in the halls of power. They want change agents, and that’s what Pete Hegseth promised he’d be if confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense. In The New York Sun, Larry Kudlow lauds Hegseth’s performance before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination yesterday. Kudlow writes:
Pete Hegseth shined Tuesday in his four-hour plus hearing to become Secretary of Defense. Right off the top, he talked about his mission to restore the warrior ethos to the Pentagon, to rebuild the military, and to re-establish deterrence on the global scene.
“When President Trump chose me for this position, the primary charge he gave me was to bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense,” Mr. Hegseth said. “He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser focused on lethality, meritocracy, warfighting accountability, and readiness.”
Mr. Hegseth added that Trump “believes, and I humbly agree, that it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm — a change agent.”
Rather than another bureaucrat, or even a high-ranking general, or somebody from the military-industrial boardroom, Mr. Hegseth would be a soldier’s Defense Secretary — emphasizing his “dust on the boots” experience on the battlefield.
As he put it today: “I’ve led troops in combat. I’ve been on patrol for days. I’ve pulled the trigger downrange, heard bullets whiz by, flex-cuffed insurgents, called in close air support, led medevac, dodged IEDs, pulled out dead bodies and knelt before a battlefield cross. This is not academic for me. This is my life.”
Standards will be high in a Hegseth Pentagon, but woke and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will be low.
Mr. Hegseth, a highly-decorated veteran who served in both the Afghanistan and Iraq combat zones, said again and again he wants warriors, readiness, and lethality above all else.
In his testimony today he noted that “we won World War II with seven four-star generals. Today we have 44 four-star generals. There’s an inverse relationship between the size of staffs and victory on the battlefield. We don’t need more bureaucracy at the top. We need more warfighters empowered at the bottom.”
There will be fiscal audits to curb waste, but there’s also going to be targeted spending increases in places like naval ships and nuclear deterrence, and elsewhere.
And all the Democrats could do, for over four hours, was attack him personally — quoting anonymous smears that have never been proven.
The Democrats were incredibly partisan. Not a single one showed any support at all for Mr. Hegseth. And none of the Democrats acknowledged the Biden failures in Afghanistan, or Russia-Ukraine, or the appeasement of Iran, or the faint-hearted support for Israel, or standing up to Communist China.
They were clearly in denial that they no longer control government, in denial of President Trump’s landslide election victory, and in denial — once again — of what Americans wanted and voted for in November.
Read more here.
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