Trump’s candidacy for defense secretary should concern us all Moira Donegan

IIt takes a lot to get a man’s mother to declare him a “woman abuser.” Mothers are generally not known for being rude about their sons’ behavior. But Penelope Hegseth, the mother of Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, once did just that in an email to her son.

“I have no respect for a man who belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and exploits women for his own power and ego,” Hegseth’s mother wrote to him. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother it hurts and embarrasses me to say this, but it is the sad, sad truth.” The email – which Hegseth’s mother later denied – appears to have occurred around the time of the dissolution of Hegseth’s second marriage; During Hegseth’s first marriage, he confessed to no fewer than five affairs, according to a new report from Vanity Fair.

The April 2018 email from Hegseth’s mother came just months after an October 2017 incident in which a woman claimed Hegseth raped her at a Republican women’s conference in the coastal city of Monterey, California. In a police report, the woman said that although she was drunk at the time of the incident and believed she was drugged, she “remembered saying no many times” and claimed Hegseth hit her with his body on the door of one Hotel room blocked as she tried to leave. The woman then went to the hospital; Hegseth later paid her a severance package and she signed a nondisclosure agreement. (Hegseth denies any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime.)

That 2017 incident, in which excessive alcohol consumption at a work event allegedly culminated in Hegseth committing sexual assault, is consistent with another series of allegations against the defense secretary nominee published last Sunday by The New Yorker and where whistleblowers have affected not one but two. One of Hegseth’s former employers has faced allegations of his drinking, financial mismanagement and disrespectful, lewd and abusive behavior Women put together to the point of risking their own careers to report Hegseth to management.

During his three-year term as president of the conservative group Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), Hegseth repeatedly became so drunk at work events that he had to be executed, according to a report prepared by several former CVA employees that was sent to management in February 2015. That report also alleges that Hegseth took employees to a strip club in Louisiana as part of a work event and was nearly thrown out of the venue by security when he tried to climb onto the stage with the dancers. A separate letter to CVA management (apparently many letters were sent to management about him) claims that while Hegseth was at a bar in Ohio in May 2015, he drunkenly chanted, “Kill all Muslims!” Kill everyone Muslims!”

According to the New Yorker, Hegseth’s alleged misconduct at the CVA was consistent with the inappropriate drunkenness Hegseth is said to have committed as head of another conservative nonprofit, Vets for Freedom, which was dissolved after Hegseth’s leadership drove it into bankruptcy, according to many Working groups that one insider described as “trystes”.

Hegseth was ousted as CVA president in 2016 and landed his gig on Fox News shortly thereafter. But his heavy drinking appears to have continued. NBC News interviewed 10 current and former Fox News employees who reported that Hegseth smelled of alcohol at work and complained of a hangover before going on air. One of them said they smelled alcohol at work just last month.

Taken together, the allegations paint a picture of a drunken, incompetent and sexually entitled man, prone to excessive self-indulgence and poor self-discipline, who abuses alcohol, is habitually unprofessional, is poor with other people’s money and treats women like Kleenex. It comes across as ineffective, disrespectful, wasteful and disrespectful. Trump wants to put him in charge of three million civilian and military employees, one of the largest budgets of any government agency in human history, and the country’s security and military readiness.

Incompetence has never been a disqualifying trait in Trump’s circle, and abusing women has at times seemed almost a virtue in Trump’s world. Trump represents a masculinity of dominance and boastfulness in which women’s bodies are a arena in which men demonstrate their own strength; Respect or kindness toward others is a sign of weakness; And good governance is for nerds and losers who just don’t have the guts to take action on their own.

By this standard, allegations that Hegseth sexually abused women, defrauded former employers of money and was regularly drunk cannot even be viewed as negative. They can be interpreted in the MAGA world as a sign of a man with the kind of unfounded self-confidence, disregard for others and determination to dominate that the Trump administration has always valued most highly, not least in Trump himself.

But there are signs that at least some Republicans remain capable of something like an embarrassment. NBC News reported Tuesday that up to six Republican senators are rejecting the prospect of voting to confirm Hegseth; In the closely divided Senate that meets next year, he can only afford to lose three.

Perhaps senators are put off by the allegations of Hegseth’s alcohol abuse in a way that they were not by his allegations of sexual abuse. But ultimately, senators will only withhold their vote from a Trump nominee if they feel they can politically afford to do so. Like many of Hegseth’s alleged encounters with women, the vote will be an exercise in dominance — and that’s the kind of contest Trump always wanted to win.