| Speaker | Time | Text |
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Hearing Comes to Order
00:07:18
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unidentified
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America. | |
| President George W. Bush in 2001. | ||
| And this is my solemn pledge. | ||
| I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. | ||
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unidentified
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And President Barack Obama in 2009. | |
| The challenges we face are real. | ||
| They are serious and they are many. | ||
| They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. | ||
| But know this, America. | ||
| They will be met. | ||
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unidentified
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Watch historic inaugural speeches Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | |
| Coming up, Pete Hegseth testifying for the Senate Armed Services Committee on his nomination for defense secretary. | ||
| During the hearing, he fields questions about the sexual misconduct allegations against him and on women serving in military combat roles. | ||
| The hearing will come to order. | ||
| The Committee on Armed Services has convened this hearing to consider the pending nomination of Mr. Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| And at this point, in light of the continued suffering and death in and around Los Angeles, California, I'm going to ask my colleagues and those in the audience to observe a moment of silence. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I also want to take this opportunity to thank my good friend, Ranking Member Jack Reed. | ||
| This is my first opportunity to chair this committee in this Congress. | ||
| I want to thank Senator Reed under his chairmanship. | ||
| He proved time after time that he cares deeply about national security and about the United States of America, and particularly the men and women who wear the uniform and stand watch both here and around the world to protect the United States. | ||
| Senator Reed, I want to thank you for the many courtesies that you have extended to me in the past, and I look forward to working with you again in a bipartisan fashion this Congress. | ||
| It's also appropriate to recognize and welcome three senators attending their very first Senate Armed Service Committee hearing as members. | ||
| Senator Banks of Indiana, Senator Sheehy of Montana, and Senator Slotkin of Michigan. | ||
| We are excited to have you as committee colleagues and look forward to many important contributions from each of you. | ||
| And Senator Slotkin, as I look down at the end of the dais there, it seems that only a week or two ago I was sitting in that very chair being recognized by the chairman of the committee, the distinguished senator from Michigan. | ||
| So time flies. | ||
| Now, let me say this. | ||
| We had a very appropriate expression of approval by the members of the members of the audience as our nominee and his family walked in. | ||
| The distinguished ranking member and I sincerely hope that that is the last signal of approval or disapproval in today's hearing. | ||
| People of the public are here. | ||
| They're welcome to observe today's hearing. | ||
| And Senator Reed and I agree, though, that no disruptions will be allowed. | ||
| Audience members may not verbally or physically distract from the hearing to include shouting, standing, or raising signage or gestures that block the view of the audience. | ||
| And we're very serious about this, aren't we, Mr. Reed? | ||
| And those who do so will be immediately escorted from the room. | ||
| So again, welcome to the witnesses, to his friends, and to interested members of the public. | ||
| If confirmed, Mr. Pete Hegseth would assume the role in a moment of consequence. | ||
|
Alarming Times for Defense Leadership
00:15:38
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| The United States faces the most dangerous security environment since World War II. | ||
| We're witnessing the explosive growth and reach of China's hard power. | ||
| We're also observing the emergence of an axis of aggressors. | ||
| That coalition is characterized by broadening and deepening military cooperation among the dictatorships ruling China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. | ||
| Terrorism remains a threat as Israel wages war against Hamas and Hezbollah and as the Assad regime collapses in Syria. | ||
| America has entered a window of maximum danger and the Department needs energetic and focused civilian leadership. | ||
| Those values begin at the top with the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Many of my distinguished colleagues have served in a significant tenure on this committee, and our meetings are fairly long. | ||
| We should reflect over previous Secretaries of Defense and their hearings and ask ourselves a simple question: Has the civilian leadership of the Pentagon under the administration of both parties proven up to the challenge? | ||
| Often the answer has been no. | ||
| The civilian leadership has not built the Department of Defense to meet the moment. | ||
| And this is our moment to correct that. | ||
| A few examples illustrate how leaders in the past have fallen short. | ||
| Most of the Department's signature programs run years behind schedule and billions of dollars over cost. | ||
| Vital initiatives have suffered, such as the F-35, the New Sentinel ICBM, and the Navy's shipbuilding program, including the Constellation-class frigate. | ||
| The Department of Defense desperately needs civilian leaders who listen to the advice of combatant commanders, many of whom would benefit from innovative systems. | ||
| Yet a risk-averse DoD culture has kept too many promising technologies on the wrong side of the so-called valley of death. | ||
| That tenuous period between experimental prototypes and production contracts. | ||
| Defense companies backed by venture capital receive less than 1% of defense contracts. | ||
| As we all know, the Pentagon still cannot even pass an audit. | ||
| The Department must simplify and streamline its bureaucracy so it can respond to innovation. | ||
| Staffs have ballooned. | ||
| Organizations are top heavy. | ||
| Civilian leaders have promised time and again to slim down the bureaucracy and perhaps genuinely hoped to. | ||
| Every day, men and women in uniform make tremendous contributions to U.S. security. | ||
| They and the American people deserve a Pentagon that does the same. | ||
| Today's Department of Defense is no longer prepared for great power competition. | ||
| It is not a national defense institution ready to achieve and sustain technological supremacy across the range of operations. | ||
| Admittedly, this nomination is unconventional. | ||
| The nominee is unconventional, just like that New York developer who rode down the escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. | ||
| That may be what makes Mr. Hegseth an excellent choice to improve this unacceptable status quo that I just described. | ||
| He is a decorated post-9-11 combat veteran. | ||
| He will inject a new warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth will bring energy and fresh ideas to shake up the bureaucracy. | ||
| He will focus relentlessly on the warfighter and the military's core missions, deterring wars and winning the ones we must fight. | ||
| He will bring a swift end to corrosive distraction such as DEI. | ||
| Today, many simply acknowledge and live with the systemic problems I have mentioned earlier in acquisition, accountability, technology transition, and organizational civil service reform. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth will actually move to fix these issues decisively. | ||
| In short, I'm confident that Mr. Hegseth, supported by a team of experienced top officials, will get the job done. | ||
| The Secretary of Defense is an incredibly important position, but the Secretary's span of control is limited. | ||
| The Pentagon is vast with 3 million-plus personnel, uniformed civilian, and contractor. | ||
| A successful secretary understands that steering the ship means focusing his attention on strategic level priorities. | ||
| The secretary must be supported with exceptional subordinates who will run the day-to-day affairs of the office of the Secretary of Defense, the military services, and the other DOD components. | ||
| I'm also confident that as an infantryman, Mr. Hegseth understands the military principle of commander's intent. | ||
| Communicate the clear objective, empower subordinates to use initiative and judgment, and hold everybody accountable. | ||
| We must not underestimate the importance of having a top-shelf communicator as Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Other than the President, no official plays a larger role in telling the men and women in uniform, the Congress, and the public, about the threats we face and the need for a peace-through-strength defense policy. | ||
| I have no doubt Mr. Hegseth will excel in a skill in which many of his predecessors have fallen short. | ||
| Much has been made of both Mr. Hegseth's personal life and some of his policy pronouncements. | ||
| Regarding his personal conduct, Mr. Hegseth has admitted to falling short, as we all do from time to time. | ||
| It is noteworthy that the vast majority of the accusations leveled at Mr. Hegseth have come from anonymous sources. | ||
| Contrast these anonymous accusations with the many public letters of support and commendation. | ||
| We have seen letters from people who served with Mr. Hekseth. | ||
| These individuals have worked with him professionally. | ||
| They really know him and his character. | ||
| These patriotic Americans have been willing to put their names and reputations on the line to support Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| I look forward to sharing these testimonials with the American people. | ||
| Let me mention one right now. | ||
| It comes from David Bellavilla, who earned the Medal of Honor for heroic actions in combat in Fallujah, Iraq. | ||
| David Bellaville writes the following: Pete is fearless, unflappable, and confronts conflicts head-on. | ||
| He's a leader to the core. | ||
| When Pete is confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense of the United States of America, this country will finally know the privilege of having a true ambassador able to speak on behalf of this generation and its two-decade global war on terror. | ||
| Washington doesn't build men like Pete. | ||
| Combat builds men like Pete. | ||
| As I said, there are more letters expressing the same endorsement. | ||
| Today we'll hear from the nominee directly. | ||
| I want to thank Mr. Hegseth as well as his loved ones for being here today. | ||
| I look forward to discussing his nomination. | ||
| I look forward to hearing from Mr. Hegseth about the ways he hopes to rebuild the American strength that secures the peace. | ||
| And so now I turn to my friend and colleague, Ranking Member Reid, for his opening remarks. | ||
| Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'd like to first congratulate you on your chairmanship. | ||
| I look forward to continuing our committee's strong tradition of bipartisanship and collaboration. | ||
| And thank you for your thoughtful and conscious service to the committee over many years. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'd also like to take a moment to join Chairman Wicker in welcoming our new members, Senator Slotkin, Senator Banks, and Senator Sheehy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Welcome. | |
| We look forward to working with you. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, I welcome you and your family to today's hearing. | ||
| And I'm also glad to recognize my former colleague Norm Coleman and Congressman Mike Walsh. | ||
| Thank you, Congressman. | ||
| Mr. Heckseth, I want to begin by saying that I respect and appreciate your military service in the Army National Guard. | ||
| I know from experience that there is no greater privilege than to lead American soldiers, and I thank you for answering the call. | ||
| You have been nominated to be the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| The Secretary is responsible for leading a Department of 3.5 million service members and civilians, an annual budget of nearly $900 billion, and hundreds of thousands of aircraft, ships, submarines, combat vehicles, satellites, and the nuclear arsenal. | ||
| The Secretary also plays a powerful role with our allies, partners, and adversaries abroad. | ||
| And as we speak, China is seeking to undermine our interests, intimidate our friends, and challenge our standing in the world. | ||
| Russia's campaign against Ukraine threatens not only Europe, but the entire global order. | ||
| Ongoing violence in the Middle East has teetered on the edge of all-out war, and the ideologies and actions of violent extremists endanger our citizens, even on our own soil, as the recent tragedy in New Orleans painfully reminds us. | ||
| These are perilous times, and the position of Secretary of Defense demands a leader of unparalleled experience, wisdom, and above all else, character. | ||
| The Secretary is expected to be a fair, nonpartisan, and responsible leader, as well as a trustworthy advocate for the men and women that he leads. | ||
| Mr. Hegset, I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job. | ||
| We must acknowledge the concerning public reports against you. | ||
| A variety of sources, including your own writings, implicate you with disregarding the laws of war, financial mismanagement, racist and sexist remarks about men and women in uniform, alcohol abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other troubling issues. | ||
| I have reviewed many of these allegations and find them extremely alarming. | ||
| Indeed, the totality of your own writings and alleged conduct would disqualify any service member from holding any leadership position in the military, much less being confirmed as the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Nonetheless, I understand that you reject many of these reports as they involve whistleblowers, nondisclosure agreements, and anonymous, although numerous, sources, including those who have faced political intimidation for sharing their experiences. | ||
| I hope you will address each of these allegations thoroughly and truthfully during your testimony. | ||
| Just as importantly, I hope you will pledge to prevent any repercussions for whistleblowers, both civilian and military, if confirmed. | ||
| Mr. Hegseff, during our meeting last week, you said that if confirmed, your top priority would be, quote, restoring a warrior culture to the Department of Defense, because you believe the U.S. military has been weakened by political correctness. | ||
| Over the years, you have made clear your opinion of the military's diversity initiatives. | ||
| As you have said, quote, diversity is not our strength, unity is. | ||
| And on a recent podcast, you said, quote, I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. | ||
| When I joined the Army as a young officer in the 1970s, the U.S. military was rife with racial tension. | ||
| Women were prohibited from serving in most roles. | ||
| Gay service members were banned, and we relied on a national draft to fill our ranks. | ||
| The soldiers I served with were proud to do so, but it was certainly not the nation's most capable military by any standard. | ||
| We have made great progress since then. | ||
| Today, the Department of Defense is fully integrated. | ||
| Every race and religion is accepted. | ||
| Women serve in all combat roles and leadership positions. | ||
| Sexual orientation is irrelevant to service, and the all-volunteer force visibly reflects the nation it protects. | ||
| Our military is more diverse than it has ever been, but more importantly, it is more lethal than it has ever been. | ||
| This is not a coincidence. | ||
| Mr. Hagsted, I hope you will explain why you believe such diversity is making the military weak and how you propose to undo that without undermining military leadership and harming readiness, recruitment, and retention. | ||
| Mr. Hag said, another reason I am deeply concerned about your nomination is your disregard for the law of armed conflict and your support for service members who have been convicted of war crimes. | ||
| You have championed the pardoning of military members who were turned in by their fellow soldiers and SEALs. | ||
| And let me emphasize that. | ||
| They weren't discovered by reporters. | ||
| They were turned in by fellow soldiers and fellow SEALs. | ||
| And also pardoning of military contractors convicted of killing 14 Iraqi citizens without cause. | ||
| You have also advocated for the restitution of interrogation methods like waterboarding that have been defined as torture. | ||
| And you have belittled the advice and counsel of the Judge Advocates General while on deployment. | ||
| In your book, The War on Warriors, you write, quote, should we follow the Geneva Convention? | ||
| If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren't we just better off in winning our wars according to our own rules? | ||
| Mr. Hags said, I would ask that you explain how you, if confirmed, would maintain good order and discipline within our forces and the support of our allies and partners by rejecting international law and the law of war. | ||
| I am also concerned about your abilities as a competent manager of organizations far less complex than the Department of Defense. | ||
| From 2008 to 2010, you led the organization Veterans for Freedom, which had an annual budget of less than $10 million. | ||
| In each year, you were in charge, expenses far exceeded revenues until the organization teetered on bankruptcy and had to be merged with another group. | ||
| In fact, according to public reporting, an independent forensic accountant reviewed the organization's finances and discovered evidence of gross financial mismanagement. | ||
| I would note that this report has not been made available to any government agencies, which is, I think, alarming. | ||
| But a Republican advisor to you during your tenure at the organization who read the report stated, and I quote, I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors. | ||
| The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. | ||
|
Honor Pleasure and Partisan Politics
00:11:44
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| I don't know how he's going to run an organization with an $857 billion budget and 3 million individuals. | ||
| And that is the only comment we've had and the only access we've had to the forensic report. | ||
| A similar thing happened with the Concerned Veterans for America, a second veterans group that you led from 2011 until 2016. | ||
| During those five years, tax records show that the organization spent more than it raised. | ||
| Just as troubling are reports that a significant amount of debt was incurred from social events and parties filled with excessive drinking and questionable personal behavior. | ||
| Mr. Hick said, I hope you will explain what actions you will take if confirmed to be a better steward of Defense Department's large budget. | ||
| Finally, while I appreciate our meeting last week, it is unacceptable that you did not meet with any other Democratic members of this committee before this hearing, as has been our bipartisan tradition. | ||
| During my time in the Senate, I have voted for and worked closely with Secretaries of Defense appointed by Republican presidents. | ||
| While we may disagree politically, there was always an understanding that rank partisanship should have no place when it comes to providing for the men and women who serve in uniform. | ||
| And Mr. Hegset, I am troubled by the many comments you have made both as a commentator and in your published writings. | ||
| For example, in your book, American Crusade, you wrote, quote, modern leftists who represent the soul of the modern Democratic Party literally hate the foundational ideas of America. | ||
| You also wrote, the other side, the left, is not our friend. | ||
| We are not esteemed colleagues, nor mere political opponents. | ||
| We are foes. | ||
| Either we win or they win. | ||
| We agree on nothing else. | ||
| Mr. Hags said, if confirmed as Secretary of Defense, you would lead an organization that, like the country it represents, is composed of Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| Yet your language suggests that you regard many of these men and women as foes. | ||
| And I would ask you to explain why service members and civilians who do not share your political opinions can trust that they will not be targeted during your tenure. | ||
| Indeed, the challenge of the Secretary of Defense is to remove partisan politics from the military. | ||
| You propose to inject it. | ||
| This would be an insult to the men and women who have sworn to uphold their own apolitical duty to the Constitution. | ||
| Mr. Hegstead, you are the ninth nominee for Secretary of Defense that I've had the honor to consider as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. | ||
| I have voted in favor of all your predecessors, including those in the first Trump administration. | ||
| Unfortunately, you lack the character and composure and competence to hold the position of Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Reed. | ||
| And now it's my privilege and honor and pleasure to recognize two witnesses who have come forward to introduce our nominee. | ||
| First, I recognize my former colleague and former Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota for the purpose of an introduction. | ||
| Norm, we are glad to see you and glad to have you back. | ||
| And you are recognized for the introduction. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Reed, members of the committee, my former colleagues. | ||
| I'm honored to introduce a son of Minnesota to you, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| As a senator from Minnesota, I spent many hours with this young man as he walked the halls of Congress advocating on behalf of America's veterans. | ||
| And he is young in the best sense of the word. | ||
| He is strong, focused, intelligent, incisive, a great listener, and is almost supernaturally energetic. | ||
| Just what we need in a Secretary of Defense in times of massive change. | ||
| He is the real deal. | ||
| F. Scott Fitzgerald was a writer in my city of St. Paul and said the problem with America is that there are no second acts. | ||
| He was wrong. | ||
| Pete was a brave soldier, has been an able communicator, and I believe is about to begin a great second act as our Secretary of Defense. | ||
| He has struggled and overcome great personal challenges. | ||
| Please don't give in to the cynical notion that people can't change. | ||
| We need the ones who can change to lead us, to be beacons of hope, and to remind us that grace can lead us home. | ||
| Four years ago, President Biden's nominee, Lloyd Austin, a good and honorable man, received 97 votes on the floor of the Senate. | ||
| And we went through the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal. | ||
| Putin invaded Ukraine. | ||
| The Houthis endanger our shipping lanes. | ||
| We witnessed Israeli miracles against America's enemies in the Middle East, where the United States was more of an impediment than a help. | ||
| Our recruitment numbers have sunk dramatically, and our southern border has suffered a slow but dangerous invasion. | ||
| Yes, Pete Hegseth is an out-of-the-box nominee, and I say it's high time to get out of the box. | ||
| One more thought: the country longs for a government of less division and more respect and dignity. | ||
| My hope is that this committee hearing provides what they are asking for. | ||
| Disagree? | ||
| Yes, strongly if necessary. | ||
| But then come together to support the nominee, this nominee, Pete Hegseth, of the one president we have at a time, laying aside partisan politics for the essential mission of national security upon which everything else depends. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I yield. | ||
| Thank you, Norm. | ||
| I do appreciate that and appreciate your presence today. | ||
| I now have the honor and pleasure of introducing Congressman Waltz. | ||
| I understand, Congressman, you are still a member of the House for another day or two. | ||
| Another day or two. | ||
| Okay, and I now recognize Congressman Waltz for whatever opening statement and introduction he might make. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman Wicker, and Chairman has a very nice ring to it. | ||
| So congratulations, Ranking Member Reed, distinguished members of this committee. | ||
| It is a privilege to appear before you today and urge the members of this committee to confirm Pete Hegseth as our next Secretary of Defense. | ||
| And I'm not here today just to advocate on behalf of a future colleague, but to speak on behalf of someone I consider a dear friend for over a decade and now, a decade now. | ||
| Like Pete, I served in the U.S. Army. | ||
| Like Pete, I'm a veteran. | ||
| We deployed to Afghanistan and all over the world at the height of the war on terror, which is the war of our generation. | ||
| And like thousands of other warfighters, we've witnessed the hardships of war. | ||
| We've experienced the loss of friends in combat. | ||
| We've endured too much time away from family and friends. | ||
| And no one, I can promise you this, no one hates war more than those who have had to go fight it. | ||
| No one does. | ||
| Pete's story, though, isn't that much different from the millions of other veterans. | ||
| And they know it, and they appreciate him for the experiences that he's gone through. | ||
| And after our country was brutally attacked on 9-11, Pete Hegseth answered the call of duty like so many others. | ||
| He put the interests of this country ahead of his own. | ||
| And I can tell you firsthand, as can the heroes sitting in this audience behind me. | ||
| Pete's character of country, his selflessness, his duty, these are the key tenets that have shaped him into the leader that he is today. | ||
| These are the traits that President Trump recognized when making the decision to nominate Pete for this critical He will bring the perspective of being the first Secretary of Defense to have served as a junior officer on the front lines, | ||
| not in the headquarters, on the front lines in the war on terror, and recognizes the human costs, the financial costs, and the policy drift that was discussed often in this very room that led us to decades and decades of war. | ||
| So not only does he understand the threats he faces, but as the chairman mentioned, he is brilliant, in my mind, at communicating those to the American people in a way that is often not communicated in Washington, D.C., to reach out to the American people so that they understand why the military needs to do what it needs to do. | ||
| And look, I have no doubt that he is going to get the Pentagon back to its primary mission, lethal readiness. | ||
| That warrior ethos is what our enemies will respect. | ||
| That warrior ethos is what our enemies will fear. | ||
| And it's that warrior ethos that will keep the peace. | ||
| And ladies and gentlemen, in my humble opinion, our military deserves better than it's getting. | ||
| Our country faces a devastating recruitment crisis. | ||
| Men and women are not volunteering to serve at the levels required. | ||
| Our readiness is down. | ||
| Our costs are up. | ||
| And it seems like nearly every major weapon system, again, often discussed in this very room, is costing too much, delivering too little, and taking way too long. | ||
| The bottom line is the status quo is unacceptable. | ||
| It's not working. | ||
| And the members of this committee, you all know it. | ||
| You know it's not working. | ||
| And the members of the House Armed Services know it's not working. | ||
| And we have hearing after hearing, year after year. | ||
| And here we are, decades later, describing the same problems. | ||
| The Pentagon has continuously failed audits. | ||
| The businesses that want to do business with the Pentagon have to pass an audit, but the entity itself fails an audit. | ||
| Innovation has stalled. | ||
| Morale is down. | ||
| Standards have been weakened. | ||
| And meritocracy is less valued. | ||
| And as a result, our adversaries have been emboldened all over the world. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for change. | ||
| It is time for change. | ||
| You all have literally seen thousands of veterans, as the chairman cited one amazing Medal of Honor recipient. | ||
| But we have seen thousands of veterans expressing their support for Pete. | ||
| This is a man who can reinvigorate that warrior ethos, and this is a man that will lead. | ||
| I can't imagine having a more capable partner in my position as National Security Advisor. | ||
| Pete is a man of family, of faith, and he's committed to making our country strong again. | ||
| And most importantly, brother, I know this in my core, he will always have as a first principal the service members that are out there on the front lines for all of us at the heart of every decision he makes. | ||
| So, senators, I urge you to support this confirmation. | ||
|
Timely Testimony Required
00:03:33
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| It is critical that President Trump has his national security team in place for the challenges ahead. | ||
| And I thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mike, for your testimony. | ||
| And I'm guessing that each and every member of this committee will want to have you on speed dial for the next few years. | ||
| Thank you both. | ||
| Our two guests may stay, or I know they have other engagements and responsibilities also. | ||
| But thank you both for your testimony. | ||
| At this point, Mr. Hegseth, I'm required to ask you as a nominee a series of questions that the committee asks all civilian nominees who appear before it. | ||
| If you would, please simply respond in the affirmative or negative to each question. | ||
| Have you adhered to applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Have you assumed any duties or taken any actions that would appear to presume the outcome of the confirmation process? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Exercising our legislative and oversight responsibilities makes it important that this committee, its subcommittees, and other appropriate committees of Congress receive testimony, briefings, reports, records, and other information from the executive branch on a timely basis. | ||
| Do you agree, if confirmed, to appear and testify before this committee when requested? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Do you agree to provide records, documents, and electronic communications in a timely manner when requested by this committee, its subcommittees, or other appropriate committees of Congress, and to consult with the requester regarding the basis for any good faith delay or denial in providing such records? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Will you ensure that your staff complies with deadlines established by this committee for the production of reports, records, and other information, including timely responding to hearing questions for the record? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Will you cooperate in providing witnesses and briefers in response to congressional requests? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Will those witnesses and briefers be protected from reprisal for their testimony or briefings? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So at this point, Mr. Hegseth, you'll recognize for your opening statement. | ||
| Well, thank you, Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Reid, and all the members of this committee for this opportunity today. | ||
| I'm grateful for and have learned a great deal from this advise and consent process. | ||
| Our founders knew what they were doing. | ||
| Should I be confirmed, I look forward to working with this committee, senators from both parties, to secure our nation. | ||
| I want to thank the former senator from Minnesota, Norm Coleman, for his mentorship and friendship in this process. | ||
| And the incoming National Security Advisor, Congressman, and more importantly for our purposes, Colonel Mike Waltz, for his powerful words. | ||
| I'm grateful to them both. | ||
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Reestablishing Trust in the Military
00:09:53
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| Thank you to my incredible wife, Jennifer, who has changed my life and been with me throughout this entire process. | ||
| I love you, sweetheart, and I thank God for you. | ||
| And as Jenny and I pray together every morning, all glory, regardless of the outcome, belongs to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. | ||
| His grace and mercy abounds each day. | ||
| May His will be done. | ||
| Thank you to my father Brian and Mother Penny, as well as our entire family, including our seven wonderful kids: Gunner, Jackson, Peter Boone, Kensington, Luke, Rex, sorry, it's a lot of them, and Gwendolyn. | ||
| Their future safety and security is in all of our hands. | ||
| And to all the troops and veterans watching and here in the room: Navy SEALs, Green Berets, soldiers, pilots, sailors, Marines, Gold Stars, and more, too many friends to name. | ||
| Officers, enlisted, black and white, young and old, men and women, all Americans, all warriors. | ||
| This hearing is for you. | ||
| Thank you for figuratively and literally having my back. | ||
|
unidentified
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You are a misogynist. | |
| Not only that, you are a pristine science. | ||
| And the war is blah blah by the science. | ||
| I want to thank the authorities for their swift reaction to that outburst and state that similar interruptions will be treated in like manner. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, you may continue. | ||
| Well, as I'll say again, thank you for figuratively and literally having my back. | ||
| I pledge to do the same for all of you. | ||
| It's an honored to come before this committee today as President Donald Trump's nominee for the office of Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Two months ago, 77 million Americans gave President Trump a powerful mandate for change, to put America first, at home and abroad. | ||
| I want to thank President Trump for his faith in me and his selfless leadership for our republic. | ||
| The troops have no better commander-in-chief than Donald Trump. | ||
| As I've said to many of you in private meetings, 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. | ||
| He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, warfighting, accountability, and readiness. | ||
| You may continue, sir. | ||
| Returning the Pentagon back to warfighting. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's my job. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, suspend your remarks. | ||
| Let me just say this. | ||
| The Capitol Police are going to remove immediately individuals that are disrupting the hearing. | ||
| I see a pattern, attempted to be inflicted on the committee, and we're simply not going to tolerate that. | ||
| You may proceed. | ||
| To bring back warfighting, if confirmed, I'm going to work with President Trump and this committee to one, restore the warrior ethos to the Pentagon and throughout our fighting force. | ||
| In doing so, we will reestablish trust in our military, addressing the recruiting crisis, the retention crisis, and readiness crisis in our ranks. | ||
| The members of the security force will remove members. | ||
| Mr. Heseth, you may. | ||
| You may. | ||
| The strength of our military is our unity and our shared purpose, not our differences. | ||
| Number two, we're going to rebuild our military, always matching threats to capabilities. | ||
| This includes reviving our defense industrial base, reforming the acquisitions process, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, no more valley of death for new defense companies, modernizing our nuclear triad, ensuring the Pentagon can pass an audit, and rapidly fielding emerging technologies. | ||
| And number three, we're going to reestablish deterrence. | ||
| First and foremost, we will defend our homeland, our borders, and our skies. | ||
| Second, we will work with our partners and allies to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific from the communist Chinese. | ||
| And finally, we will responsibly end wars to ensure that we prioritize our resources to reorient to larger threats. | ||
| We can no longer count on reputational deterrence. | ||
| We need real deterrence. | ||
| The Department of Defense under Donald Trump will achieve peace through strength. | ||
| And in pursuing these America First National Security Goals, we will remain patriotically apolitical and stridently constitutional. | ||
| Unlike the current administration, politics should play no part in military matters. | ||
| We are not Republicans. | ||
| We are not Democrats. | ||
| We are American warriors. | ||
| Our standards will be high and they will be equal. | ||
| Not equitable. | ||
| That's a very different word. | ||
| We need to make sure every warrior is fully qualified on their assigned weapon system. | ||
| Every pilot's fully qualified and current on the aircraft they are flying. | ||
| And every general or flag officer is selected for leadership or promotion purely based on performance, readiness, and merit. | ||
| Leaders at all levels will be held accountable. | ||
| And warfighting and lethality and the readiness of the troops and their families will be our only focus. | ||
| This has been my focus ever since I first put on the uniform as a young Army ROTC cadet at Princeton University in 2001. | ||
| I joined the military because I love my country and felt an obligation to defend it. | ||
| I served with incredible Americans in Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and on the streets of Washington, D.C., many of which are with me here today. | ||
| This includes enlisted soldiers I helped become American citizens, and Muslim allies I helped immigrate from Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| Because when I took off the uniform, my mission never stopped. | ||
| Now, it is true and has been acknowledged that I don't have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years. | ||
| But as President Trump also told me, we've repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they are retired generals, academics, or defense contractor executives. | ||
| And where has it gotten us? | ||
| He believes, and I humbly agree, that it's time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm. | ||
| A change agent, someone with no vested interest in certain companies or specific programs or approved narratives. | ||
| My only special interest is the warfighter. | ||
| Deterring wars and, if called upon, winning wars by ensuring our warriors never enter a fair fight. | ||
| We let them win and we bring them home. | ||
| Like many of my generation, I've been there. | ||
| I've led troops in combat. | ||
| I've been on patrol for days. | ||
| I've pulled a trigger downrange, heard bullets whiz by, flex-cuffed insurgents, called in close air support, led medevacs, dodged IEDs, pulled out dead bodies, and knelt before a battlefield cross. | ||
| This is not academic for me. | ||
| This is my life. | ||
| I led then, and I will lead now. | ||
| Ask anyone who's ever worked for me or with me. | ||
| I know what I don't know. | ||
| My success as a leader, and I very much look forward to discussing my organization's successes at Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| I'm incredibly proud of the work that we've done. | ||
| But my success as a leader has always been setting a clear vision, hiring people smarter and more capable than me, empowering them to succeed, holding everyone accountable, and driving toward clear metrics. | ||
| Build the plan, work the plan. | ||
|
Opportunity To Respond
00:04:46
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| and then work harder than everyone else around you. | ||
| I've sworn an oath to the Constitution before, and if confirmed, I will proudly do it again, this time for the most important deployment of my life. | ||
| I pledge to be a faithful partner to this committee, taking input and respecting oversight. | ||
| We share the same goals, a ready, lethal military, the health and well-being of our troops, and a strong and secure America. | ||
| Thank you for the time, and I look forward to your questions. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Before we begin with member questions, I would like to remind my colleagues that consistent with the bipartisan staff agreement from December and in concert with exactly how this committee dealt with the last Secretary of Defense nominee, each member will be recognized for one round of seven minutes to question the nominee. | ||
| Out of respect for the time of all members of this committee, the time limits will be tightly enforced. | ||
| We've now been here 45 minutes, and I think we've done very well with the time. | ||
| But at this point, I will begin my questioning of the nominee. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, you and your family have endured criticism of your nomination since it was announced in November. | ||
| Let's get into this allegation about sexual assault, inappropriate workplace behavior, alcohol abuse, and financial mismanagement during your time as a nonprofit executive. | ||
| I should note that the majority of these have come from anonymous sources in liberal media publications. | ||
| But I want to give you an opportunity to respond to these allegations, sir. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, thank you. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, thank you for that opportunity. | ||
| You are correct. | ||
| We undertook this responsibility with an obligation to the troops to do right by them for our warfighters. | ||
| And what became very evident to us from the beginning, there was a coordinated smear campaign orchestrated in the media against us. | ||
| That was clear from moment one. | ||
| And what we knew is that it wasn't about me. | ||
| Most of it was about President Donald Trump, who's had to endure the very same thing for much longer amounts of time. | ||
| And he endured it in incredibly strong ways. | ||
| So we, in some ways, knew it was coming. | ||
| We didn't understand the depth of the dishonesty that would come with it. | ||
| So from story after story in the media, left-wing media, we saw anonymous source after anonymous source based on second or third-hand accounts. | ||
| And time and time again, stories would come out and people would reach out to me and say, you know, I've spoken to this reporter about who you really are, and I was willing to go on the record, but they didn't print my quote. | ||
| They didn't print any of my quotes. | ||
| Or I've worked with you for 10 years, or I was your accountant, or I was your chief operating officer, or I was your board member, or I was with you on 100 different tour stops for Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| No one called me. | ||
| No one asked about your conduct on the record or off the record. | ||
| Instead, a small handful of anonymous sources were allowed to drive a smear campaign and agenda about me because our left-wing media in America today, sadly, doesn't care about the truth. | ||
| All they were out to do, Mr. Chairman, was to destroy me. | ||
| And why do they want to destroy me? | ||
| Because I'm a change agent and a threat to them, because Donald Trump was willing to choose me to empower me to bring the Defense Department back to what it really should be, which is warfighting. | ||
| So I am willing to endure these attacks, but what I will do is stand up for the truth and for my reputation. | ||
| False attacks, anonymous attacks, repeated ad nauseum, printed as nausea, as facts. | ||
| We have provided to the committee, Mr. Chairman, and I know you're going to share, on the record statement after on-the-record statement from people who have served with me, worked with me at Fox News, Concerned Vets, Vets for Freedom, you name it, from the top of the chain to the bottom, who will say I treat them with respect, with kindness, with dignity. | ||
|
Military Emails Revealed
00:14:26
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| That's men, that's women, that's black, that's white, that's every background. | ||
| I have prided myself as a leader of respecting people, being professional. | ||
| That is the balance of mind. | ||
| I'm not a perfect person, as has been acknowledged. | ||
| Saved by the grace of God by Jesus and Jenny. | ||
| I'm not a perfect person, but redemption is real. | ||
| And God forged me in ways that I know I'm prepared for. | ||
| And I'm honored by the people standing and sitting behind me. | ||
| And I look forward to leading this Pentagon on behalf of the warfighters. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| And frankly, I'm sure there are millions of Americans watching who would agree that they've experienced that same sort of redemption. | ||
| So I do appreciate that. | ||
| I realize that it involves a little burying of the soul, but thank you for that. | ||
| Now let's talk about top-line defense spending. | ||
| I have a plan. | ||
| I think you've read it. | ||
| I issued another plan for Freedom's Forge, which you've also had a chance to look at. | ||
| And you have noted correctly that the current trend line of defense spending falling below 3% of our GDP is a threat to national security. | ||
| You also said building the strongest and most powerful military in the world must be done responsibly, but it cannot be done on the cheap. | ||
| You still agree with that, do you not? | ||
| Yes, sir, I do. | ||
| So tell us what you think about, particularly about my plan to make the Defense Department less bureaucratic, less top-heavy, cut out some of the bureaucracy and layers, make it more friendly to startups and to new ideas contained in my 20 or so page white paper defending Freedom's Forge. | ||
| Senator, I've had a chance to review the Forged Act, that paper. | ||
| Those are precisely the kinds of ideas that need to be pursued. | ||
| And I look forward to working with this committee to ensure we cut the red tape, we incentivize innovation, we rebuild the defense industrial base, cut out the bureaucracy, all the things that are preventing the platforms and the tools from getting rapidly from our great defense companies here that should, and those that want to compete into the hands of warfighters. | ||
| But past his prologue on this, sir. | ||
| And I would just look at what President Trump did after the drawdowns of Lead from Behind under President Obama. | ||
| President Trump rebuilt our military. | ||
| He didn't start wars, he ended them. | ||
| He didn't allow wars to start on his watch. | ||
| We've had the same kind of defense cuts under the Biden administration. | ||
| And so, look, I would present to the committee the reputation of President Donald Trump and me coming alongside him to ensure we have peace through strength by rebuilding our military, investing as necessary. | ||
| Going under 3 percent, Mr. Chairman, is very dangerous. | ||
| Okay, we have got 45 seconds. | ||
| Tell us in that point, get us started at least talking about deterring China and the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| It starts with priorities. | ||
| The 2017 National Defense Strategy was the first step in reorienting away from simply entanglement in the Middle East, which our generation knows a lot about, and reorienting the behemoth that is the Pentagon toward new priorities, specifically the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| So that strategy has started and was barely followed through on under the Biden administration. | ||
| So we're going to start by ensuring the institution understands that as far as threats abroad, the CCP is front and center, also obviously defending our homeland as well. | ||
| Thank you very much, Senator Reed. | ||
| You are recognized. | ||
| Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Before I begin my questioning, I would like to make three requests. | ||
| First, many of my members would like a second round. | ||
| That has been the custom. | ||
| Senator Hagel was afforded three rounds. | ||
| Senator Ash Carter, two rounds. | ||
| And that was done by a Republican chairman with the consent and the appropriate guidance of Democrats. | ||
| I must say, too, my recollection is I've never denied anyone the opportunity to ask the second round of questions as I chaired. | ||
| I would request a second round. | ||
| And my time is running. | ||
| I think these are admitted. | ||
| Oh, yeah, you're using your time. | ||
| No, if the timekeeper will pause the time. | ||
| I must say, I think we are going to have adequate time for questioning. | ||
| I know Democrat members have coordinated their questions as much as we have. | ||
| We are following the same exact precedent on all things that we did with Secretary Austin. | ||
| So I respectfully understand what you are saying, but I think we have an agreement. | ||
| It has been known for quite some time. | ||
| And I intend to stick with that agreement, which we made last December. | ||
| What is your second request? | ||
| Second, as been publicly reported, you and I have both seen the FBI background investigation that Mr. Higgs said. | ||
| And I want to say for the record, I believe the investigation was insufficient, frankly. | ||
| There are still FBI obligations to talk to people. | ||
| They have not had access to the forensic audit, which I referenced to, and the person who had access to was quite critical of Mr. Higgs said. | ||
| And I think people on both sides have suggested that they get the report. | ||
| I know your colleagues have asked for it. | ||
| Senator Thune assured me personally that he thought it was an appropriate idea. | ||
| So I would ask, and I would say too, as the President, one of President Trump's appointees had similar, very complicated personal issues. | ||
| The report was made available to all the members of the committee. | ||
| We would be following precedent. | ||
| I ask that that be made possible. | ||
| Again, there's been much discussion about this. | ||
| And what I intend to do is follow the exact precedent that we've had for the last two hearings with regard to Secretaries of Defense, not only Secretary Austin, but Secretary Mattis eight years ago. | ||
| And that was for the chair and the ranking member to see the report. | ||
| And so that is my intention as chair of this committee. | ||
| Finally, Mr. Chairman, I have several letters that I would include for the record. | ||
| One from Count Every Hero, which is an organization of retired four-star generals and former Secretary of Defense that is critical of the proposed purge panels, one from an organization for domestic violence, one for a Council on American Relations, and also several letters that raise questions. | ||
| I would ask they be submitted for the record. | ||
| Without objection, they will be submitted. | ||
| And Mr. Reed, your time has now expired. | ||
| Just kidding. | ||
| You're recognized for seven minutes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're very understanding, Chairman. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| Ms. Hegsett, you've written, and it's quote, oh, yeah, and fire any general who hasn't carried water for Obama and Biden's extra-constitutional and agenda-driven transformation for our military. | ||
| Clean house and start over. | ||
| It's come to my attention that current serving military personnel have received emails threatening them with being fired for supporting the current DOD policies. | ||
| One mail that was sent to a military officer with the subject line, clean house, reminiscent of your specific comment, states, and I quote, with the incoming administration looking to remove disloyal, corrupt, traitorous, liberal officers such as yourself, we will certainly be putting your name into the list of those personnel to be removed. | ||
| We know you support the woke DEI policies and will ensure you never again influence anyone in the future. | ||
| You and the redacted spouse's name will be lucky if you're able to collect your military requirement. | ||
| ⁇ Now, I want to remind everyone that these policies that are being referred to date back decades to the 1940s and 50s with respect to racial discrimination particularly. | ||
| And administrations of both parties, including the Trump administration and their first party, caused those policies to be enforced. | ||
| Mr. Hegset, are you aware of these emails being sent to officers? | ||
| Senator, you mentioned the word accountability, which is something we have not had for the last four years. | ||
| Are you aware of these messages being sent to officers? | ||
| Certainly I'm not aware of that. | ||
| It's not one of my efforts. | ||
| But there's been no accountability for the disaster of the withdrawal in Afghanistan, and that's precisely why we're here today. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Is that leadership has been unwilling to take accountability, and it's time to restore that to our most senior ranks. | ||
| You have written publicly that DEI policy is a distraction and have military personnel walking on eggshells. | ||
| Do you believe that emails like that that are essentially threatening both a serving officer and a spouse and claiming that they'll lose their pension will have a distraction and detract from the lethality? | ||
| Senator, you mentioned the 40s and 50s, and you're precisely right. | ||
| The military was a forerunner in courageous racial integration in ways no other institutions were willing to do. | ||
| I served with men and women of all backgrounds because of the courage of people during the decades of decades. | ||
| It was incredibly important. | ||
| Please, do you mean that the DEI policies of today are not the same as what happened back then? | ||
| They're dividing troops inside formations, causing commanders to walk on eggshells, not putting meritocracy first. | ||
| That's the indictment that's made by those serving right now and why we're having this conversation. | ||
| All of your public comments don't talk about meritocracy. | ||
| They talk about liberal democratic efforts that are destroying the military, that those people are our enemies. | ||
| That's not meritocracy. | ||
| That's a political view. | ||
| And your goal, as I see emerging, is to politicize the military in favor of your particular positions, which you've outlined extensively, which would be the worst blow to the professionalism of the United States military and would undercut readiness, undercut retention, because I can see officers receiving these emails beginning to wonder very seriously if they should continue. | ||
| Let me change subject for a moment here. | ||
| You've been instrumental in securing pardons for several convicted war criminals. | ||
| In at least two of these cases, the military personnel who served in combat with these convicted service members were not supportive of the pardons. | ||
| They did their duty as soldiers to report war crimes. | ||
| Your definition of lethality seems to embrace those people who do commit war crimes rather than those who stand up and say this is not right. | ||
| So what's the response to your service members who personally witnessed these and courageously reported them to their superiors? | ||
| Senator, as someone who's led men in combat directly and had to make very difficult decisions, I've thought very deeply about the balance between legality and lethality, ensuring that the men and women on the front lines have the opportunity to destroy with and close the enemy and that lawyers aren't the ones getting in the way. | ||
| I'm not talking about disavowing the laws of war or the Geneva Conventions or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. | ||
| Sir, I'm talking about restrictive rules of engagement that these men and women behind me understand they've lived with on the battlefield, which has made it more difficult to defeat our enemies. | ||
| In many of the cases you're talking about in particular, sir, there was evidence withheld. | ||
| There was prosecutorial misconduct. | ||
| And as someone who looks case by case and defaults to the warfighter, to the men and women with dust on their boots, not the second guessers in air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C. Excuse me. | ||
| I look case by case and was proud to work with President Trump to understand those cases and ensure that our warriors are always looked out for. | ||
| Those cases that were adjudicated were adjudicated by who? | ||
| People in Washington or fellow non-commissioned officers who had also served, sacrificed, and believed in the ethic of the military. | ||
| Who were the court-martial trials? | ||
| Senator, in multiple cases, they were actually acquitted, but charges lingered, regardless of where those competing authorities were, yes, sir. | ||
| Some were, but others were convicted, and you asked for pardon. | ||
| That's the only reason you asked for pardon, because they were convicted. | ||
| But the other factor, too, is you've already disparaged in writing the Geneva Convention, the rules of law, all of these things. | ||
| How will you be able to effectively lead a military in which one of the principal elements is discipline, respect for lawful authority? | ||
| You have made statements to your platoon after being briefed by a JAG officer. | ||
|
Nuclear Deterrence Priority
00:15:17
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| By the way, would you explain what a JAG off is? | ||
| I don't think I need to, sir. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Because the men and women watching understand. | ||
| Well, perhaps some of my colleagues don't understand. | ||
| It would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the warfighters, their promotions, their medals in front of having the backs of those who are making the tough calls on the front lines. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Reagan. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Senator Fisher. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Mr. Higseth, to you and to your family. | ||
| Thank you for the meeting that we had. | ||
| We talked about a number of things. | ||
| First and foremost was that nuclear weapons are foundational to our national defense. | ||
| And having a safe, effective, and credible nuclear deterrent underpins our alliances and, as you know, deters our adversaries. | ||
| Nuclear deterrence has been, and you and I, I believe, agreed on this, it must continue to be unequivocally the highest priority mission of the Department of Defense. | ||
| But deterrence only works if our adversaries believe our nuclear forces are effective and credible. | ||
| All three legs of our triad are undergoing that generational recapitalization programs, and we cannot afford any more delays in those programs. | ||
| Sir, do you believe and agree with President Trump's 2018 nuclear posture review that preventing adversary and nuclear attacks is, quote, the highest priority of the United States? | ||
| Senator, yes, I do. | ||
| If confirmed, will you commit to supporting all three legs of the nuclear triad and to using every tool available to deliver these systems on schedule? | ||
| Senator, yes, I do, because ultimately, our deterrence, our survival, is reliant upon the capability, the perception, and the reality of the capability of our nuclear triad. | ||
| We have to invest in its modernization for the defense of our nation. | ||
| While former secretaries of defense have stated that nuclear deterrence is the highest priority, we haven't really seen that translated into budget requests or using the tools like the Defense Production Act. | ||
| You've spoken about increasing lethality. | ||
| You've spoken about getting programs done faster. | ||
| How would you actually implement a culture change so that we can see these delivery schedules move forward, be rewarded? | ||
| I can tell you in most every briefing we have, the schedules we're on are too late. | ||
| So what would you do? | ||
| Well, ultimately, focused first on the things that are most important, as we have discussed, Senator, the nuclear triad, understanding whether it's the B-21 or the Minuteman to the Sentinel, all aspects of the Columbia-class submarines, ballistic missiles. | ||
| What are the priorities that need to be focused on and ensure that in those particular cases, you mentioned it, Senator, the Defense Production Act, emergency powers. | ||
| If we're at a place where our nuclear capabilities are perceived to not be what they are, that is an emergency. | ||
| And we have an ally in our incoming commander-in-chief in President Donald Trump who has spoken about these things, understands the power and strength of nuclear deterrence, will not outline the. | ||
| It's the existential threat. | ||
| It's the existential threat to this nation. | ||
| How do you change the culture? | ||
| It's not just the Production Act that's going to be able to do it. | ||
| How are you going to move forward faster? | ||
| Competition, Senator, is important, critically important. | ||
| The Death Valley that was talked about, leveraging the innovation of Silicon Valley, which for the first time in generations has shown a willingness, desire, and capability to bring its best technologies to bear at the Pentagon, a Pentagon that has become too insular, tries to block new technologies from coming in. | ||
| So we have to embrace that, provide, there's some great Office of Strategic Capital, DIU initiatives that provide loans to companies to participate, because you have to invest in the defense industrial base for the longer-term projects. | ||
| We have the capability, the missiles and the munitions, but also to rapidly field emerging technologies that we need on the battlefield right now. | ||
| So as we learn things, say in the war in Ukraine, those technologies, as we look at threats we're going to face, find ways to rapidly field those using off-the-shelf technologies or standard designs, modular designs. | ||
| Another easy one, Senator, that became evident in the process is digital designs. | ||
| The Pentagon often builds entire systems without first using a digital design, which means you build prototypes and then scrap them and start over again. | ||
| No private sector business could survive doing business that way. | ||
| So there's a lot of innovation, and I'm going to hire a lot of smart people already have to help with that. | ||
| In the 2025 NDAA, it was established to a new position, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical and Biological Defense Policy and Programs. | ||
| And that was established so we could cut through a lot of the bureaucratic stovepipes that we see in the office of the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| If confirmed, will you direct the Department of Defense components to expeditiously implement this reform? | ||
| It sounds great. | ||
| I would want to look directly at exactly what that reform is. | ||
| I take your word that it's great, Senator. | ||
| I will review it robustly, and I look forward to implementing it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| During the first Trump administration, the 2018 nuclear posture review concluded that the U.S. needed to once again develop and deploy a nuclear-armed sea-launch cruise missile known as SLICCOM to offset significant Russian and Chinese advantages in theater-range nuclear capabilities. | ||
| Since then, Congress, on a strong bipartisan basis, has directed the Navy and the National Nuclear Security Administration to continue this effort. | ||
| Do you support the SLICOM program? | ||
| As of right now, Senator, based on what I know, I do, but one of my answers I'll have repeatedly throughout this morning is getting an opportunity to look under the hood, classified material, get an understanding of true capabilities, vis-a-vis enemy capabilities. | ||
| Because what we know right now on the nuclear side, sorry, Senator, what I know on the nuclear side is that Russia and China are rushing to modernize and build arsenals larger than ours. | ||
| We need to match threats to capabilities, and the systems we elevate will be tied to whether those capabilities are needed based on the adversaries we see. | ||
| Would you ensure that this program is executed according to law? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Absolutely, Senator. | ||
| Short here. | ||
| What is your plan to revitalize the industrial base in this country? | ||
| Needs to be real short. | ||
|
unidentified
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Real short. | |
| Serious investment targeted at systems that we truly need by also incentivizing competition and laser focus from the OSD, from the Office of Secretary of Defense, to all the particular strategic initiatives to revive them so it's not just one system, it's multiple systems. | ||
| You may want to expand on that on the record. | ||
| At this point, My colleagues, I would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter organized by a group called Flag Officers for America, which has 120 retired generals and admirals offering their support for Mr. Hexis' nomination. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent. | ||
| Without objection, it is entered into the record. | ||
| Senator Shaheen. | ||
| Good morning, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Good morning, Senator. | ||
| I was pleased when I was contacted on your behalf about meeting before this hearing. | ||
| I've been on this committee since 2011, and during that time, I voted to confirm six nominees to be Secretary of Defense from three administrations, two Democratic and one Republican, the first Trump administration. | ||
| Every one of those nominees met with me and my Democratic colleagues on this committee before the hearing. | ||
| So as you can imagine, I was disappointed when no one ever followed up. | ||
| When we followed up with your office, you were not able to meet. | ||
| Do you understand that if you're confirmed to be Secretary of Defense, that you will have a responsibility to meet with all members of this committee, not just Republicans? | ||
| Senator, I very much appreciate and understand the traditionally bipartisan nature of this committee. | ||
| Their national defense is not partisan. | ||
| It should not be about Republicans or Democrats. | ||
| And so I look forward to working together with you and your colleagues on priorities facing this nation. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| I think we would expect that. | ||
| And one reason that I wanted to meet with you was because I thought it would be really helpful to better understand your views on women in the military. | ||
| Because you've made a number of surprising statements about women serving in the military. | ||
| As recently as November the 7th of 2024 on the Sean Ryan show, you said, and I quote, I'm straight up saying that we should not have women in combat roles. | ||
| It hasn't made us more effective. | ||
| The quote went on a little longer, but that was the gist of it. | ||
| That was before you were nominated to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Mr. Hagseth, do you know what percentage of our military is comprised of women? | ||
| I believe it's 18 to 20 percent, Senator. | ||
| It's almost 18 percent. | ||
| And in fact, DOD's 2023 demographic report indicated that there are more women serving now, and there are fewer separations. | ||
| So they make up a critical part of our military, wouldn't you agree? | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| Women in our military, as I have said publicly, have and continue to make amazing contributions across all aspects of our battlefield. | ||
| Well, you also write in your book, The War on Warriors, with the chapter, The Deadly Obsession with Women Warriors, that, quote, not only are women comparatively less effective than men in combat roles, but they are more likely to be objectified by the enemy and their own nation in the moral realms of war. | ||
| Mr. Hegseff, should we take it to believe that you believe that the two women on this committee who have served honorably and with distinction made our military less effective and less capable? | ||
| I'm incredibly grateful for the two women who've served our military in uniform and including in the Central Intelligence Agency, contributions on the battlefield, indispensable contributions. | ||
| Senator, I would like to clarify, when I'm talking about that issue, it's not about the capabilities of men and women, it's about standards. | ||
| And this committee has talked a lot about standards, standards that we, unfortunately, over time have seen eroded in certain duty positions, certain schools, certain places, which affects readiness, which is what I care about the most. | ||
| Readiness is a very important thing. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| And so to my comments, time and time again to standards. | ||
| Your statements publicly have not been to that effect. | ||
| After your nomination, you did state to a group of reporters that you, quote, support all women serving in our military today who do a fantastic job across the globe, including combat. | ||
| So what I'm confused about, Mr. Hegseth, is which is it? | ||
| Why should women in our military, if you were the Secretary of Defense, believe that they would have a fair shot and an equal opportunity to rise through the ranks. | ||
| If on the one hand you say that women are not competent, they make our military less effective, and on the other hand, you say, oh no, now that I've been nominated to be the Secretary of Defense, I've changed my view on women in the military. | ||
| What do you have to say to the almost 400,000 women who are serving today about your position on whether they should be capable to rise through the highest ranks of our military? | ||
| Senator, I would say I would be honored to have the opportunity to serve alongside you, shoulder to shoulder, men and women, black, white, all backgrounds, with a shared purpose. | ||
| Our differences are not what define us. | ||
| Our unity and our shared purpose is what define us. | ||
| And you will be treated fairly with dignity, honor, and respect, just like every man and woman in uniform, just like the men and women that I've worked with in my veterans' organizations, to include when I was a headquarters and headquarters company commander in the Minnesota National Guard. | ||
| Well, I appreciate your 11th hour conversion. | ||
| But, Mr. Chairman, for the record, I would like to submit Chapter 5, The Deadly Obsession with Women Warriors, for the record. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Without objection, it will be submitted. | ||
| Are you familiar with the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda at the Department of Defense? | ||
| Yes, ma'am, I am. | ||
| This is a law that was signed during President-elect Trump's first term. | ||
| It was legislation that I sponsored with Republican Senator Capito of West Virginia. | ||
| It was co-sponsored by Marco Rubrio, the nominee to be the President-elect's Secretary of State. | ||
| It was led in the House of Representatives by Christy Noam, the President-elect's nominee to be the Secretary of Homeland Security. | ||
| It mandates that women be included in all aspects of our national security, including conflict resolution and peace negotiations. | ||
| And at the Department of Defense, it has been the law for eight years under both the Trump and Biden administrations. | ||
| The DOD has incorporated women throughout its decision-making as a result. | ||
| Every single combatant commander across two administrations has told this committee that this law and its implementation at the Department of Defense provides them a strategic advantage operationally. | ||
| Based on your comments, it appears that the example that you would like to set not only for women in this country but for women across the globe, 50 percent of the world's population, as the prospective nominee to lead the most combat-credible military in the entire world, is that women should not have an equal opportunity in our military. | ||
|
Bravo Company's Gender Debate
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| So will you commit to preserving the women, peace, and security law at DOD and including in your budget the requisite funding to continue to restore and resource these programs throughout the DOD? | ||
| Senator, I will commit to reviewing that program and ensuring it aligns with America First National Security priorities, meritocracy, lethality, and readiness. | ||
| And if it advances American interests, it's something we would advance. | ||
| If it doesn't, it's something we would advise. | ||
| Former President Trump's side of the law, I hope that he agrees with you. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Shaheen. | ||
| At this point, I would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record five letters of support from female service members and combat veterans who support Mr. Hegseth's nomination. | ||
| These women represent diverse viewpoints from a retired colonel with over 25 years of service to an active duty Navy surface warfare commander to a senior airman. | ||
| They support Mr. Hegseth and comment on his focus on merit, warfighting readiness, military training status, and the warrior ethos. | ||
| So without objection, it will be entered into the record. | ||
| And now I'm honored to recognize Senator Cotton for seven minutes. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, let's continue on this line of questioning about what's sometimes referred to as women in combat. | ||
| I think that phrase is something of a misnomer. | ||
| Many members of this committee have served in combat in the last 25 years, to include women and men. | ||
| I'm sure all those men served with women, whether they were military police officers or they were pilots or whether they were intelligence analysts or medics or what have you. | ||
| You served. | ||
| I assume you served with women who were on the front lines as well. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| And were those women anything other than skilled, brave, and honorable in their service? | ||
| They were some of the best soldiers I worked with. | ||
| So women have been serving in combat for a long time. | ||
| Women may have even been serving in combat units like infantry battalions for a long time, in roles like medics or mechanics or what have you. | ||
| So what we're talking about here specifically is women in ground combat roles in jobs like infantrymen or artillerymen or special forces. | ||
| Until about 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. | ||
| Under Secretary Panetta, those roles were opened up to women to serve in. | ||
| Has President Trump indicated at all that he plans to rescind or alter that guidance? | ||
| You're correct to point out, Senator, that these are the decisions that the Commander-in-Chief will have the prerogative to make. | ||
| He has not indicated to me that he has plans to change whether or not women would have access to these roles. | ||
| However, I would point out, ensuring that standards are equal and high is of importance to him and great importance to me. | ||
| Because in those ground combat roles, what is true is that the weight of the ruck on your back doesn't change. | ||
| The weight of the 155 round that you have to carry doesn't change. | ||
| The weight of the 240 Bravo machine gun you might have to carry doesn't change. | ||
| And so whether it's a man or a woman, they have to meet the same high standards. | ||
| And Senator, in any place where those things have been eroded or in courses, criteria have been changed in order to meet quotas, racial quotas, or gender quotas, that is putting a focus on something other than readiness, standards, meritocracy, and lethality. | ||
| So that's the kind of review I'm talking about, not whether women have access to ground combat rules. | ||
| Okay, so thank you. | ||
| So you expect no change to that guidance, but as you point out, in these specific jobs, there are irreducible physical demands. | ||
| We expect our intelligence analysts and our mechanics to be physically fit in the military, but it's different when you're in the infantry or the artillery. | ||
| You just mentioned a few things. | ||
| Let me point it out. | ||
| An artillery shell weighs almost 100 pounds. | ||
| An Abrams tank round weighs around 50 pounds. | ||
| The M240 Bravo machine gun with its tripod weighs almost 50 pounds. | ||
| The average weight of a full kit, ammo, water, como, body armor for a soldier is over 100 pounds. | ||
| Nothing you can do can change any of those things, right? | ||
| That is physical reality. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Yes, Senator. | ||
| And I would say the requirements to handle those things in a ground combat unit as far as standards can look different than those of a medic or a drone pilot. | ||
| And so it's not that it has to be the same standard throughout, it's standards to maximize efficacy of that particular position. | ||
| Let me read a quote here from one Army officer. | ||
| While it may be difficult for a 120-pound woman to lift or drag 250 pounds, the Army cannot artificially absolve women of that responsibility. | ||
| It may still exist on the battlefield. | ||
| The entire purpose of creating a gender-neutral test was to acknowledge the reality that each job has objective physical standards to which all soldiers should be held, regardless of gender. | ||
| The intent was not to ensure that women and men will have an equal likelihood of meeting those standards. | ||
| I assume, based on your testimony, you agree with that Army officer? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| The standards need to be the same and they need to be high. | ||
| And they need to be set by the people closest to the problem set, closest to the understanding of what is required by that job. | ||
| Commanders, commanding officers, and co-comms and elsewhere who understand the reality of what they face, that's the feedback we should get. | ||
| That's what should be enshrined and enforced. | ||
| And no other set of political prerogatives. | ||
| When I talk about removing politics, ideological, or political prerogatives should contribute to those determinations. | ||
| Nothing other than the execution of the mission. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| For the record, that Army officer was Captain Kristen Greest, the Army's first female infantry officer and one of its first female Ranger School graduates. | ||
| One final point. | ||
| You said they need to be objective, gender-neutral, and high. | ||
| That's because the demands are, in fact, very high. | ||
| The current physical fitness test for the Army has a minimum two-mile run of 22 miles. | ||
| Run. | ||
| And I want the reporter to note that I'm putting run in air quotes because 22 miles at two miles is not running. | ||
| It may be jogging. | ||
| It's probably walking fast. | ||
| Let's move on. | ||
| 22 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| We've got a big audience here. | ||
| Many of them seem to be patriotic supporters of you, Mr. Hegset. | ||
| Some of them seem to be liberal critics of you. | ||
| I would note that it's only the liberal critics that have disrupted this hearing. | ||
| As was my custom during the Biden administration, I want to give you a chance to respond to what they said about you. | ||
| I think the first one accused you of being a Christian Zionist. | ||
| I'm not really sure why that is a bad thing. | ||
| I'm a Christian. | ||
| I'm a Zionist. | ||
| Zionism is that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in the ancient Holy Land where they've lived since the dawn of history. | ||
| Do you consider yourself a Christian Zionist? | ||
| Senator, I support, I am a Christian, and I robustly support the state of Israel and its existential defense and the way America comes alongside them as a great. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Because another protester, and I think this one was a member of Code Pink, which, by the way, is a Chinese Communist Front group these days, said that you support Israel's war in Gaza. | ||
| I support Israel's existential war in Gaza. | ||
| I assume, like me and President Trump, you support that war as well, don't you? | ||
| Senator, I do. | ||
| I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas. | ||
| And the third protester said something about 20 years of genocide. | ||
| I assume that's our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| Do you think our troops are committing genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan? | ||
| Senator, I do not. | ||
| I think our senator, our troops, as you know, as so many in this committee know, did the best they could with what they have. | ||
| We're not, the outcomes, and tragically, the outcome we saw in Afghanistan under the Biden administration put a stain on that, but it doesn't put a stain on what those men and women did in uniform, as you know full well, Senator. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hickseth. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Cotton. | ||
| Point, I ask unanimous consent to offer to the record a letter submitted by Omar Abbasi, son of former city council president of Samara, Iraq, who worked with Mr. Hegseth in Iraq. | ||
| Without objection, that will be entered. | ||
| Senator Gillibrand. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| I do want to thank you for your service and I want to thank you for your willingness to serve in this capacity. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
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I have many concerns about your record and particularly your public statements because they are so hurtful to the men and women who are currently serving in the U.S. military, harmful to morale, harmful to good order and discipline. | |
| If you are saying that women shouldn't be serving in the military, and I'm going to read you your quotes because the quotes themselves are terrible. | ||
| You will have to change how you see women to do this job well. | ||
| And I don't know if you are capable of that. | ||
| So I want to press on these issues that my colleague Jean Shaheen brought up because she said it so well. | ||
| So first of all, you answered your questionnaire. | ||
| Do you believe that any American who wants to serve their country in the military and can meet objective standards set by the military should be allowed to serve without limitation? | ||
| You've said yes to that question. | ||
| But then in all of these other circumstances, you've denigrated active duty service members. | ||
| We have hundreds, hundreds of women who are currently in the infantry, lethal members of our military serving in the infantry. | ||
| But you degrade them. | ||
| You say, we need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units. | ||
| So specific to Senator Khan's question, because Senator Cotton was giving you layups to differentiate between different types of combat. | ||
| And specifically, as Secretary, would you take any action to reinstitute the combat arms exclusion for female service members, knowing full well you have hundreds of women doing that job right now? | ||
| And the standards, your two-mile run, Tom, is about the Army combat fitness test. | ||
| It is not the requirements to have an MOS 11 Bravo, which is the infantry. | ||
| These are the requirements today for people serving in the industry, men and women. | ||
| They are gender neutral and they are very difficult to meet. | ||
| They have not been reduced in any way. | ||
| And our combat units, our infantry, is lethal. | ||
| So please explain specifically because you will be in charge of 3 million personnel. | ||
| It is a big job. | ||
| And when you make these public statements, and I get you were not Secretary of Defense then, I get you were on TV. | ||
| I get you were helping veterans. | ||
| I get it was a different job. | ||
| But most recently, you said this in November of 2024, knowing full well you might have been named as Secretary of Defense. | ||
| So please explain these types of statements because they're brutal and they're mean and they disrespect men and women who are willing to die for this country. | ||
| Well, Senator, I appreciate your comments. | ||
| And I would point out I have never disparaged women serving in the military. | ||
| I respect every single female service member that has put on the uniform past and present. | ||
| My critiques, Senator, recently and in the past, and from personal experience, have been instances where I've seen standards lowered. | ||
| And you mentioned 11 Alpha, 11 Bravo, MOS, places in units. | ||
| And the book that has been referenced multiple times here, The War on Warriors, I spent months talking to active duty service members, men and women, low ranks, high ranks, combat arms and not combat arms. | ||
| And what each and every one of them told me, and which personal instances have shown me, is that in ways direct, indirect, overt, and subtle, standards have been changed inside infantry training units, ranger school, infantry battalions to ensure that you can't be able to get away from the money. | ||
|
unidentified
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Give me one example. | |
| Please give me an example. | ||
| I get you're making these generalized statements. | ||
| Quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted, and that disparages those women who are in the middle of the middle. | ||
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unidentified
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Commanders do not have to be quotas for the infantry. | |
| Commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. | ||
| That does not exist. | ||
| It does not exist. | ||
| And your statements are creating the impression that these exist, because they do not. | ||
| There are not quotas. | ||
| We want the most lethal force. | ||
| But I'm telling you, having been here for 15 years listening to testimony about men and women in combat and the type of operations that were successful in Afghanistan and in Iraq, women were essential for many of those units. | ||
| When Ranger units went in to find where the terrorists were hiding in Afghanistan or in Iraq, if they had a woman in the unit, they could go in, talk to the women in a village, say, where are the terrorists hiding? | ||
| Where are the weapons hiding? | ||
| And get crucial information to make sure that we can win that battle. | ||
| So just you cannot denigrate women in general, and your statements do that. | ||
| We don't want women in the military, especially in combat. | ||
| What a terrible statement. | ||
| So please, do not deny that you've made those statements. | ||
| You have. | ||
| We take the responsibility of standards very seriously, and we will work with you. | ||
| I'm equally distressed. | ||
| You would not meet with me before this hearing. | ||
| We could have covered all of this before you came here so I could get to the 15 other questions that I want to get to. | ||
| So women you have denigrated. | ||
| You have also denigrated members of the LGBTQ community. | ||
| Did you know that when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was in place, we lost so many crucial personnel, over a thousand in mission-critical areas. | ||
| We lost 10% of all our foreign language speakers because of a political policy. | ||
| You said in your statement, you don't want politics in the DOD. | ||
| Everything you've said in these public statements is politics. | ||
| I don't want women. | ||
| I don't want moms. | ||
| What's wrong with a mom, by the way? | ||
| Once you have babies, you therefore are no longer able to be lethal. | ||
| I mean, you're basically saying women after they have children can't ever serve in the military in a combat role. | ||
| It's a silly thing to say. | ||
| It's a silly thing to say, beneath the position that you are aspiring to. | ||
| To denigrate LGBTQ service members is a mistake. | ||
| If you are a sharpshooter, you're as lethal regardless of what your gender identity is, regardless of who you love. | ||
| So please know this to be a true statement. | ||
| So you say, you say it was a political thing. | ||
| You say it undermined us. | ||
| Social engineering. | ||
| I don't know why someone having to publicly say or not publicly say who they love is social engineering. | ||
| I think having that policy in the first place was highly problematic. | ||
| And as you said in your statement, do you agree anybody should be able to serve in the military if they meet the standards? | ||
| Senator, as the president has stated, I don't disagree with the overturn of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. | ||
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Spectrum and Beyond
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unidentified
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Great, because I don't want you thinking, can't serve if you're a mom, can't serve if you're LGBTQ, and then last, can't serve if you're a leftist. | |
| The statements you said about people who have views differently than you, that we're the enemy, are you saying that 50% of the DOD, if they hold liberal views or leftist views or our Democrats, are not welcome in the military? | ||
| Are you saying that? | ||
| Senator, I volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan under Democrat President Barack Obama. | ||
| I also volunteered to guard the inauguration of Joe Biden, but was denied the opportunity to serve because I was identified as an extremist by my own unit for a Christian tattoo. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Senator Gillibrand, you held up a document and referred to it during your questioning. | ||
| Would you like that entered into the record? | ||
|
unidentified
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It may be one without my marks. | |
| We'll delete that. | ||
|
unidentified
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We'll submit a clean copy. | |
| Without objection, that will be admitted at the point of your question. | ||
| And I would like to enter into the record at this point a letter of support from retired Air Force Colonel Melissa Cunningham. | ||
| Colonel Cunningham supports Mr. Hegseth and mentions his warrior ethos, combat effectiveness, and maintaining military training standards. | ||
| So without objection, both of those will be admitted and I now recognize Senator Rounds. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| First of all, good morning. | ||
| I'd like to thank you for your service to our nation in uniform and also your work on behalf of your fellow veterans and for your willingness to enter into this maelstrom of public service. | ||
| I think the presence of so many veterans who have showed up to support you speaks volumes. | ||
| I also want to recognize your family service and sacrifice. | ||
| You know as well as anyone that it's not just the man that enters the arena, but it's the entire family who also works their way through this process as well. | ||
| I appreciated our meeting with you and with your wife Jennifer this last month. | ||
| I thought that we had an excellent conversation and I appreciate your statement and your answers to the advanced policy questions, especially your desire to bring a renewed focus on warfighting and lethality back to the Pentagon. | ||
| I also respect and I appreciate my friend and colleague Senator Gillibrand and some of her questions and I know that she had a number of them in there. | ||
| You had an opportunity to respond very briefly. | ||
| Were there any other responses that you would like to make or clarifications that you would like to make before I move on to my questions? | ||
| Senator, thank you very much for the opportunity to meet and for the question. | ||
| I would also acknowledge you were mentioning female engagement teams, which have shown a great deal of success on the battlefield. | ||
| It would be and universally acknowledged as such. | ||
| I've been in Iraqi homes where the language and gender barrier was real and the ability to have someone there to help in that process would be a massive accelerant in mission success. | ||
| I recognize that really. | ||
| I also recognize that female engagement teams assigned to a SEAL team or a Green Beret team meet different standards also, which is okay because of the duty positions involved in that job. | ||
| As far as politics, Senator, it has been the joy of my life to lead men and women in military outfits. | ||
| When you're in combat or in training, there's a lot of conversations that happen. | ||
| And you start to realize that a lot of people you're serving with share your political ideas or they don't. | ||
| You find out there's Republicans, there's Democrats, there's Libertarians, there's Independents, there's vegetarians, everything in between. | ||
| None of that matters. | ||
| It never mattered in how I led men and women, how I interacted with them, what missions we undertook. | ||
| Politics has nothing to do with the battlefield, which is why President Trump has asked me to say, let's make sure all of that comes out. | ||
| This is about warfighting capability, setting standards high, and making sure we give our boys, our men and women, everything they need to be successful on the battlefield. | ||
| So politics can play no part in that, and I look forward to infusing that, as we always have, inside our units. | ||
| I appreciate you making that very clear. | ||
| And one of the areas that we want to do our best is to provide for the equipment and the technical capabilities so that no young man or woman enters into a battle as a fair fight and that they always have the advantage. | ||
| Those are the types of questions that I'd like to get into right now. | ||
| And I want to start by talking about something that sometimes gets a little bit into the weeds, but I think it's critical. | ||
| Mr. Heckset, from what I've heard from 24 senior DOD officials in hearings over the last two years, including the Secretary of Defense, every service chief, and eight combatant commanders, | ||
| is that sharing the portion of the spectrum, and this is in the weeds I know, but I'm going to ask it to get it on the record, the 3.1 to 3.5 gigahertz band would have extremely serious consequences and very costly consequences on our warfighting capabilities. | ||
| In fact, the Department of the Navy alone has estimated that relocating their systems to a different part of the spectrum band would cost them $250 billion. | ||
| That's just for the destroyers that defend our coasts with the radars that they have in them. | ||
| If confirmed, what will you do to make sure that the Department of Defense can maintain its access and the use and to be able to maneuver within the electromagnetic spectrum at home and abroad? | ||
| And would you be willing to literally go to the mat with the interagency to protect warfighter requirements for the use of the spectrum? | ||
| Well, Senator, thank you for the question. | ||
| And my job, in part, will be to go to the mat when necessary for things I believe are an absolute requirement for the Department of Defense and the men and women in uniform. | ||
| There's no doubt about that. | ||
| In this particular case, as far as spectrum, I look forward, as I've said before, getting a full class, because this issue has come up a number of times in meetings. | ||
| It's critically important with how our warfighters communicate across all services. | ||
| So I'm going to get a classified briefing immediately about how it would impact the spectrum if it were to allow other companies or other it to be ours. | ||
| Rest assured China would love to have our ability to use that part of the spectrum restricted. | ||
| They would love that. | ||
| Absolutely right. | ||
| And so I will go in with eyes only toward ensuring we have the capabilities we need and there's no disruption when I take that brief. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| In your advanced policy questions, you recognize a cooperative approach by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea to undermine U.S. influence around the world. | ||
| As you point out, aggression by any one actor would be an opportunity for others to engage the U.S. on multiple fronts along the continuum of the conflict. | ||
| As we discussed in my office, neither of us wants to send our troops into a fair fight. | ||
| We want to make sure that they have every advantage that the United States can give them, and that requires resources and reforms. | ||
| Given the growing potential of a multi-theater conflict involving near-peer adversaries, what steps would you take to prepare the Department of Defense to simultaneously execute and sustain operations across multiple regions while maintaining readiness and deterrence globally? | ||
| And I just have to make note, and I want to make it clear, we have language in this year's fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act calling for a review of the Department's operational plans. | ||
| And I just want to make sure that you're aware of that and that we will have, if we have a fight with one, the chances are very good that we're going to have two battles or two different battlegrounds at the same time. | ||
| Senator, which is why I believe our country is incredibly fortunate to have a new commander-in-chief in Donald Trump, who through the strategic approach he has taken with allies and against foes has prevented wars and is determined to do the same. | ||
| That's our chief job, is deter and prevent wars. | ||
| My job, should I be confirmed at the Secretary of Defense, is to ensure we have the right prioritization of assets and strategy and then the tools in the toolbox necessary, the pointiest possible spear for President Trump to wield if necessary as the last resort. | ||
| So, President Trump at the helm, I think, will go a long way in making sure our enemies know there's a new sheriff in town. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And thank you very much, Senator Blumenthal. | ||
| Thanks, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you for having this hearing. | ||
| Thank you for being here, Mr. Heckseth. | ||
| And I want to join in expressing appreciation and respect for your service to our country. | ||
| And thanks to all the veterans who are here today. | ||
| And thank you for your service as the ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. | ||
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| I hope we can focus on doing better for our veterans and doing better in management of the Department of Defense. | ||
| There's always room for improvement. | ||
| I think what we need in that position is not just better, but the best in financial management, because those decisions are life and death decisions affecting the 3.4 million Americans who serve our national security and our national defense and put their lives on the line. | ||
| I want to talk about financial mismanagement at the two organizations that you headed, which are the only test of your financial management that we have before this committee, the Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| You took over the Veterans for Freedom in 2007. | ||
| In 2008, you raised $8.7 million but spent more than $9 million creating a deficit. | ||
| By January 2009, you told donors that the organization had less than $1,000 in the bank and debts of $434,000. | ||
| By 2010, revenue at the Veterans for Freedom had dropped to about $265,000. | ||
| In the next year, it had dropped further to $22,000. | ||
| You don't dispute these numbers, do you? | ||
| Senator, I am extremely proud of the work me and my fellow vets did at Vets for Freedom. | ||
| A bunch of young vets with no political experience, a small group working hard every single day. | ||
| We raised donor funds. | ||
| And we have letters submitted for the record from almost everyone that worked with me every single day, including our chief operating officer, who will attest that every dollar we raised was used intentionally toward the execution of our mission, which is supporting the warfighters, exactly why we are here today, the warfighters in the Iraq surge. | ||
| There was a campaign in 2008, Senator. | ||
| It was Barack Obama. | ||
| I would like to ask you another question. | ||
| I believe John McCain would be the right person to win. | ||
| And so we spent tax returns from that organization. | ||
| I am glad they are for the record. | ||
| I am going to ask to be entered into the record, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| These tax returns are yours. | ||
| They have your signature. | ||
| And I am going to ask that members of the committee review them because they are the only documents. | ||
| I have asked for others. | ||
| I have asked for the FBI report that would presumably document, it should have documented this kind of financial mismanagement. | ||
| And these are the 990s from that organization. | ||
| By the year of 2011, donors had become so dissatisfied with that mismanagement, they, in effect, ousted you. | ||
| They merged that organization with Military Families United. | ||
| And thereafter, you joined a second organization as executive director. | ||
| Senator, I went to Harvard D.C. | ||
| I want to ask you questions about Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| Again, another set of tax returns, the 990s from that organization. | ||
| I ask they be made part of the record, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Without objection, both of those returns are now part of the record. | ||
| 2011 to 2016. | ||
| At the end of 2013, shortfall of $130,000. | ||
| At the end of 2014, shortfall of $428,000. | ||
| You had a surplus the following year, but then another deficit of $437,000. | ||
| By the time you left, that organization had deep debts, including credit card transaction debts of about $75,000. | ||
| That isn't the kind of fiscal management we want at the Department of Defense. | ||
| We can't tolerate it at the Department of Defense. | ||
| That's an organization with a budget of $850 billion, not $10 or $15 million, which was the case at those two organizations. | ||
| And it has command responsibility for 3.4 million Americans. | ||
| The highest number that you managed in those two organizations was maybe 50 people. | ||
| Let me ask you, how many men and women now serve in the United States Army? | ||
| What is SENSTRAN? | ||
| Senator, I would have liked an opportunity to respond to the leadership of the Veterans Organization. | ||
| Concerned Veterans for America, you are on the VA committee, sir, and I appreciate your service there. | ||
| The VA Accountability Act and the Mission Act were all brainchilds of Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| We used our donor money very intentionally and focused to create policy that bettered the lives of veterans. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, I am asking you a very simple question. | ||
| How many men and women currently serve in the United States Army? | ||
| Senator, the United States Army, 450,000 on active duty, sir. | ||
| And how many in the Navy? | ||
| And the Navy is 425, sir. | ||
| Well, it is 337 this year. | ||
| How many in the Marine Corps? | ||
| 175,000, sir. | ||
| 172,300. | ||
| Those numbers dwarf any experience you had by many multiples. | ||
| I don't believe that you can tell this committee or the people of America that you are qualified to lead them. | ||
| I would support you as the spokesperson for the Pentagon. | ||
| I don't dispute your communication skills, but I believe that we are entitled to the facts here. | ||
| I have asked for more documents. | ||
| I assume you would be willing to submit to an expanded FBI background check that interviews your colleagues, accountants, ex-wives, former spouses, sexual assault survivors and others, and enable them to come forward. | ||
| Senator, I am not in charge of FBI and background checks. | ||
| But you would submit to it and support it. | ||
| I am not in charge of FBI background checks. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. | ||
| I, at this point, want to submit a letter from Captain Wade Zirkle, the founder of Vets for Freedom, and the person who hired Pete Hegseth to run the organization. | ||
| Although the 2008 financial crisis dried up fundraising for nonprofits, Captain Zirkle says, and I quote, Pete responded to this crisis with decisive action by reducing staff and renegotiating all debts with creditors until they were fairly resolved. | ||
| An impressive feat and a testament to Pete's character. | ||
| Pete departed VFF in 2010 to take on a new role with Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| Pete departed on good terms. | ||
| Without objection, that will be added to the record. | ||
| Senator Ernst, you are recognized for seven minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chair. | ||
| And I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter submitted by Mr. Mark Lucas, who is a fellow Iowan and Iowa Army National Guard member. | ||
| Mr. Lucas and I served together in the Iowa Army National Guard. | ||
| He succeeded Pete Hegseth as Executive Director of Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| And in his letter, Mr. Lucas says that Mr. Hegseth, quote, laid a strong foundation that postured CVA for long-term success, end quote, and that Mr. Hegseth, quote, continued to be an invaluable asset to both me as a leader and the organization, end quote. | ||
| So I would ask for unanimous consent to enter this Washington Times article and the letter from Mr. Mark Lucas into the record. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. | ||
| Good morning, Mr. Hegseth, and thank you very much. | ||
| I appreciate your service to our nation. | ||
| It's something that I know you are very proud of, and it is something that we have in common and that we share. | ||
| You and I have had many productive conversations. | ||
| And just for our audience, we have had very frank conversations. | ||
| Is that correct, Mr. Hegseth? | ||
| Senator, that is a correct characterization. | ||
| You know that I don't keep anything hidden, pull no punches. | ||
| My colleagues know that as well. | ||
| So I do appreciate you sitting down and allowing me the opportunity to question you thoroughly on those issues that are of great importance to me. | ||
| Just to recap those issues, three that are very important. | ||
| One is the DOD and making sure that we have a clean audit. | ||
| The second is women in combat, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. | ||
| And the third was maintaining high standards and making sure that we are combating sexual assault in the military. | ||
| Okay, so Mr. Hegseth, I'm going to address the issue because this will tie into some of the financial concerns that have been raised here as well. | ||
| And it's why, you know, I trusting my fellow Iowan asked for unanimous consent of his letter to go into the record. | ||
| But like me, a lot of Iowans are really, really concerned and upset about the wasteful Washington spending and, of course, in our Pentagon. | ||
| It's an issue that I have been combating for years. | ||
| So there's significant room for greater efficiency and cost cutting within the department. | ||
| And the DOD is the only federal agency that has never passed an audit. | ||
| As the Senate Doge caucus chair and founder, that's unacceptable to me, and it should be unacceptable to you as well. | ||
| So I appreciate that you mentioned that in your opening statement. | ||
| What are those steps that you will take to ensuring the Pentagon has a clean audit by the year 2028? | ||
| Senator, I appreciate your work on this topic, which you've been involved in for a long time. | ||
| You mentioned Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| I just want to clarify, we have very generous donors who set a very clear budget that we stuck to every single year. | ||
| So the latitude there was restricted and we worked very hard and diligently inside it. | ||
| You've also been a leader on the Pentagon audit for a very long time. | ||
| I think when we met, Senator, I said 2014 was the first year. | ||
| We discovered a 2013 op-ed I wrote about the need for a Pentagon audit because an audit is an issue of national security and frankly respect to American taxpayers who give $850 billion over to the Defense Department and expect that we know where that money goes and if that money is going somewhere that doesn't add to tooth and instead goes to fat or tail, we need to know that. | ||
| Or if it's wasted, we need to know that. | ||
| So I think previous Secretaries of Defense with all due respect haven't necessarily emphasized the strategic prerogative of an audit. | ||
| And myself, my deputy SECDAF and others already know that a Pentagon audit will be the comptroller, others central to ensuring we find those dollars that can be used elsewhere legally under the law inside the Pentagon. | ||
| So you have my word, it will be a priority. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| Okay, moving on to women in combat, and I had the privilege of serving in uniform for over 23 years between our Army Reserves and our Iowa Army National Guard. | ||
| Did serve in Kuwait and missions in Iraq. | ||
| And so it is incredibly important that I stress, and I hope that if confirmed, you continue to stress that every man and woman has opportunity to serve their country in uniform and do so at any level as long as they are meeting the standards that are set forward. | ||
| And we talked about that in my office. | ||
| I do believe in high standards. | ||
| Now, I was denied the opportunity to serve in any combat role because I have a lot of gray hair. | ||
| And the policy has changed since then. | ||
| Okay, so I've been around for quite a while. | ||
| But for the young women that are out there now and can meet those standards, and again, I'll emphasize they should be very, very high standards. | ||
| They must physically be able to achieve those standards so that they can complete their mission. | ||
| But I want to know, again, let's make it very clear for everyone here today. | ||
| As Secretary of Defense, will you support women continuing to have the opportunity to serve in combat roles? | ||
| Senator, first of all, thank you for your service, as we discussed extensively as well. | ||
| That's my privilege. | ||
| And my answer is yes, exactly the way that you caveated it. | ||
| Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, combat rows, given the standards remain high. | ||
| And we'll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases. | ||
| That'll be part of one of the first things we do at the Pentagon is reviewing that in a gender-neutral way, the standards, ensuring readiness and meritocracy is front and center. | ||
| But absolutely, it would be the privilege of a lifetime to, if confirmed, to be the Secretary of Defense for all men and women in uniform who fight so heroically. | ||
| They have so many other options. | ||
| They decide to put their right hand up for our country, and it would be an honor to have a chance to lead them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And just very briefly, we only have less than a minute left, but we have also discussed this in my office. | ||
|
Commitment to Military Deterrence
00:11:04
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| A priority of mine has been combating sexual assault in the military and making sure that all of our service members are treated with dignity and respect. | ||
| This has been so important. | ||
| Senator Gillibrand and I have worked on this, and we were able to get changes made to the Uniform Code of Military Justice to make sure that we have improvements on how we address the tragic and life-altering issues of rape, sexual assault. | ||
| It will demand time and attention from the Pentagon under your watch if you are confirmed. | ||
| So, as Secretary of Defense, will you appoint a senior-level official dedicated to sexual assault prevention and response? | ||
| Senator, as we have discussed, yes, I will. | ||
| Okay, and my time has expired. | ||
| Thank you for your answers. | ||
| Senator Hirono. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Hagseg, welcome. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I am focused on your fitness to serve, including your character and temperament, and your overall qualifications to do the job. | ||
| And I do appreciate the comments of Ranking Member Reed with his concerns regarding your nomination because I share those concerns. | ||
| As part of my responsibility as a member of this committee to ensure the fitness of all nominees to come before any of the committees on which I sit, I ask the following two initial questions. | ||
| First, since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature? | ||
| No, Senator. | ||
| Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement relating to this kind of conduct? | ||
| Senator, I was falsely accused in October of 2017. | ||
| It was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared. | ||
| I don't think completely cleared is accurate, but the fact is that your own lawyer said that you entered into an NDA and paid a person who accused you of raping her a sum of money to make sure that she did not file a complaint. | ||
| Moving on. | ||
| As Secretary, you will be in charge of maintaining good order and discipline by enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice, UCMJ. | ||
| In addition to the sexual assault allegations, and by the way, the answer to my second question should have been yes. | ||
| I have read multiple reports of your regularly being drunk at work, including by people who worked with you at Fox News. | ||
| Do you know that being drunk at work is prohibited for service members under the UCMJ? | ||
| Senator, those multiple false anonymous reports peddled by NBCD to the dozens of men and women at Fox News. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm completed directly to my question. | |
| In your opening statement, Mr. Hags said, you commit to holding leaders accountable at all levels. | ||
| That includes you, of course. | ||
| And frankly, as Secretary, you will be on the job 24-7. | ||
| You recently promised some of my Republican colleagues that you stopped drinking and won't drink if confirmed, correct? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Will you resign as Secretary of Defense if you drink on the job, which is a 24-7 position? | ||
| I've made this commitment on behalf of the United States. | ||
| Will you resign as Secretary of Defense? | ||
| I've made this commitment on behalf of the men and women I'm serving because it's the most important deployment of the government. | ||
| I'm not going to answer to my question, so I'm going to move on. | ||
| While you have made that commitment, you will not commit to resigning if you drink on the job. | ||
| As Secretary of Defense, you will swear an oath to the Constitution and not an oath to any man, woman, or president. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| Senator, on multiple occasions, including as a young second lieutenant, I have sworn an oath to the Constitution and I'm proud to do so. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| In June of 2020, then-President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the legs in downtown D.C., an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. | ||
| Would you carry out such an order from President Trump? | ||
| Senator, I was in the Washington, D.C. National Guard unit that was in Lafayette Square during those. | ||
| Would you carry out an order to shoot protesters in the legs? | ||
| I saw 50 Secret Service agents get injured by rioters trying to jump over the fence, set the church on fire, and destroy the government. | ||
| That sounds to me that you will comply with such an order. | ||
| You will shoot protesters in the leg. | ||
| Moving on. | ||
| President-u-Lek has attacked our allies in recent weeks, refusing to rule out using military force to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, and threatening to take to make Canada the 51st state. | ||
| Would you carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, by force, or would you comply with an order to take over the Panama Canal? | ||
| Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful commander. | ||
| We're not talking about the election. | ||
| My question is: would you use our military to take over Greenland or an ally of Denmark? | ||
| Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand. | ||
| And so I would never in this public forum give one way or another direct order to the President. | ||
| It sounds to me that you would contemplate carrying out such an order to basically invade Greenland and take over the Panama Canal. | ||
| Current DOD policy allows service members and eligible dependents to be reimbursed for travel associated with non-covered reproductive health care, including abortions. | ||
| Will you maintain this common sense policy? | ||
| Senator, I've always been personally pro-life. | ||
| I know President Trump has as well, and we will review all policies, but our standard is whatever the president wants on this particular issue. | ||
| If the president tells you that this policy will not be maintained, you will not enable our service members to seek reproductive care. | ||
| So does the President of the United States? | ||
| I don't believe the federal government. | ||
| I'm not hearing answers to my question, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I just want to note that the other area that was of serious concern to me is President Trump saying that he wants to use the military to help with mass deportations, which will cost billions of dollars. | ||
| And what that will do to readiness is very, very concerning. | ||
| Mr. Hex, I have noticed a disturbing pattern. | ||
| You previously have made a series of inflammatory statements about women in combat, LGBTQ service members, Muslim Americans, and Democrats. | ||
| Since your nominations, however, you have walked those back on TV in interviews and most recently in your opening statements. | ||
| You are no longer on Fox and Friends, Mr. Hickset. | ||
| If confirmed, your words, actions, and decisions will have real impacts on national security and our service members' lives. | ||
| There are close to 3 million personnel in the Department of Defense, $900 billion budget. | ||
| I hardly think you are prepared to do the job. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That wasn't a question, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Rono. | ||
| Senator Sullivan. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Congratulations on your nomination and thank you and your family for your service and sacrifice. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Now for the most important question you will receive all day. | ||
| In 1935, before the Congress, the father of the United States Air Force General Billy Mitchell was testifying about a certain place in the world. | ||
| He said, quote, I believe that in the future, whoever holds this place will control the world. | ||
| This location is the most strategic place in the world. | ||
| What place was Billy Mitchell talking about? | ||
| And let me give you a hint, it wasn't Greenland. | ||
| I believe he was talking about the great state of Alaska. | ||
| He was talking about the great state of Alaska. | ||
| Great answer. | ||
| If confirmed, will you commit to come with me to the great state of Alaska and meet our warriors who are on the front lines every day? | ||
| Senator, I have. | ||
| And as I mentioned to you in the past, I did a brief training exercise up at Fort Wainwright at a previous part of my military life. | ||
| I look forward to returning. | ||
| Great. | ||
| And I will say we are on the front lines with this new era of authoritarian aggression. | ||
| In Alaska, the last two years, we've had Chinese and Russian naval task forces, joint strategic bomber task forces in our EEZ, in our AIDIS. | ||
| And after his election, President Trump put out an extensive statement on Alaska, which included the following statement. | ||
| We will ensure Alaska gets even more defense investments as we fully rebuild our military, especially as Russia and China are making menacing moves in the Pacific. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, if confirmed, will you work with me, this committee, and the incoming Commander-in-Chief on continuing to build up our military assets and infrastructure in Alaska to re-establish deterrence in the Arctic and in the Indo-Pacific? | ||
| If confirmed, Senator, it would be a pleasure to work alongside you and this entire committee to recognize the very real threat in the Indo-Pacific, the very real ways, even these past couple of weeks, that Russia has attempted to probe and push in and around Alaska, and also the very real strategic significance of Alaska vis-a-vis shipping lanes through the Arctic. | ||
| There are many, many ways in which Alaska is strategically significant, and with a shift toward a necessary shift toward Indo-PACOM. | ||
| Alaska, by necessity, will play an important role in that. | ||
| Thank you, Ms. Hegseth. | ||
| I very much appreciate your focus on lethality and warfighting. | ||
|
Biden-Woke Military Misconceptions
00:04:19
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| We desperately need it. | ||
| I want to provide a few examples of the Biden-woke military, which is not focused on readiness or lethality, and want to get your comments on it. | ||
| Nobody wants an extremist or racist in our military, but one of the most disgraceful and shameful things I've seen over the past four years as a senator on this committee and as a Marine Corps Reserve officer was on day one, the Biden administration played up a false and insulting narrative that our military was chock full of racists and violent extremists. | ||
| This reached a pinnacle in this committee when Biden's Under Secretary of Policy, Colin Call, the number three guy at the Pentagon, testified that one of his top goals would be to, quote, ending violent extremism and systemic racism within the ranks of the military. | ||
| He had no data on this. | ||
| The media loved it, fanned the flames, wrote baloney stories on this false narrative. | ||
| Disappointingly, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle here reinforce this ridiculous narrative, one even suggesting that almost 10% of our uniformed military was extremist, 200,000 members, ridiculous, by the way, from this committee on the other side of the aisle. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, unlike Under Secretary Call, you have a lot of experience with our military. | ||
| Do you believe the military is a systemically racist organization? | ||
| And if confirmed, will you commit to defend, not denigrate our troops? | ||
| Senator, I was also offended by those comments because anyone who's been on active duty in the National Guard, man, woman, in units, understand that is fundamentally false. | ||
| By the way, there's three studies, to his credit, Secretary Offson put out one of them that said exactly what you just said. | ||
| Fundamentally false. | ||
| Senator, they knew it. | ||
| Anyone who'd been in a unit knew it. | ||
| One could argue that if not the least, one of the least racist institutions in our country is the United States military. | ||
| Being a racist in our military has not been tolerated for a very long time. | ||
| One of the greatest civil rights organizations in America. | ||
| Would you agree the U.S. military is one of the most forward-leaning, probably one of the greatest civil rights organizations in American history? | ||
| No doubt. | ||
| Let me turn to another one. | ||
| Last year at a hearing before this committee, I called on the Biden Secretary of the Navy to resign because he's failing in his ability to build ships. | ||
| We are being completely outbuilt in terms of ships by the Chinese, and yet this Secretary of the Navy has been focused on climate change, not building ships in lethality. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, if your Secretary of the Navy ends up focusing on climate change more than shipbuilding and lethality, will you commit to me to fire him? | ||
| My Secretary of the Navy, should I be confirmed, sir, will not be focused on climate change in the Navy, just like the Secretary of the Air Force won't be focused on LG-powered fighter jets, or the Secretary of the Army will not be focused on electric-powered tanks. | ||
| Let me ask, I have one minute. | ||
| We're going to be focused on lethality. | ||
| We have one minute. | ||
| We're going to have to be defeating our enemy. | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| The other thing President Biden did, his first executive order as president, was to focus on transgender surgeries for active duty troops. | ||
| This is all I'm describing the woke military here under Biden over the last four years. | ||
| If confirmed and you issued an order saying we are going to rip the Biden woke yoke off the neck of our military and focus on lethality and warfighting, how do you think the troops will react? | ||
| Senator, I know the troops will rejoice. | ||
|
Admitting False Claims
00:09:05
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| They will love it. | ||
| They will love it. | ||
| And we've already seen it in recruiting numbers. | ||
| There's already been a surge since President Trump won the election of recruiting the Army. | ||
| And you think our military will pass its order. | ||
| And our military will follow that order? | ||
| Our military will follow that order. | ||
| Gladly, because they want to focus on lethality and warfighting and get all the woke political prerogative, politically correct social justice, political stuff out of the military. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Sullivan. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Kane. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| I'm looking forward to this opportunity to talk. | ||
| I want to return to the incident that you referenced a minute ago that occurred in Monterey, California in October 2017. | ||
| At that time, you were still married to your second wife, correct? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| And you had just fathered a child by a woman who would later become your third wife, correct? | ||
| Senator, I was falsely charged. | ||
| Fully investigated and completely cleared. | ||
| So you think you are completely cleared because you committed no crime. | ||
| That's your definition of cleared? | ||
| 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 that had been born two months before and you tell us you are completely cleared? | ||
| How is that a complete clear? | ||
| Senator, her child's name is Gwendolyn Hope Hegseth, and she's a child of God and she's seven years old. | ||
| And she was and you cheated on the mother of that child less than two months after that daughter was born, didn't you? | ||
| Those were false charges? | ||
| Well, fully investigated, and I was completely cleared. | ||
| And I am so grateful for the marriage I have to this year. | ||
| No, you've admitted that you had sex at that hotel in October 2017. | ||
| You said it was consensual, isn't that correct? | ||
| Anything 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 your judgment? | ||
| Completely false charges against me. | ||
| So I investigated and I was completely clear. | ||
| You have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two after you just had fathered a child by wife three. | ||
| You've admitted that. | ||
| Now, if it had been a sexual assault, that would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, wouldn't it? | ||
| It was a false claim then and a false claim now. | ||
| If it had been a sexual assault, that would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, wouldn't it? | ||
| That was a false claim. | ||
| I'm talking about a hypothetical. | ||
| So you can't tell me whether someone who has committed a sexual assault is disqualified from being Secretary of Defense? | ||
| Senator, I know in my instance, and I'm talking about my instance only, it was a false claim. | ||
| But you acknowledge and fully acknowledge that you cheated on your wife and that you cheated on the woman by whom you had just fathered a child. | ||
| You have admitted that. | ||
| I will allow your words to speak for themselves. | ||
| You're not retracting that today. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| I assume that in each of your weddings you've pledged to be faithful to your wife. | ||
| You've taken an oath to do that, haven't you? | ||
| Senator, as I've acknowledged to everyone in this committee, not a perfect person, not claiming to be. | ||
| But no, I just asked a simple question. | ||
| You've taken an oath like you would take an oath to be Secretary of Defense in all of your weddings to be faithful to your wife. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully I'm redeemed by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. | ||
| In finalizing divorces from your first and second wives, were there non-disclosure agreements in connection with those divorces? | ||
| Senator, not that I'm aware of. | ||
| If there were, would you agree to release those first and second wives from any confidentiality agreement? | ||
| Senator, it's not something I'm aware of. | ||
| But if there were, you would agree to release them from a confidentiality agreement. | ||
| Senator, that's not my responsibility. | ||
| Did you ever engage in any acts of physical violence against any of your wives? | ||
| Senator, absolutely not. | ||
| But you would agree with me that if someone had committed physical violence against a spouse, that would be disqualifying to serve as Secretary of Defense, correct? | ||
| Senator, absolutely not. | ||
| Have I ever done that? | ||
| You would agree that that would be a disqualifying offense, would you not? | ||
| Senator, you're talking about a hypothetical. | ||
| I don't think it's a hypothetical. | ||
| Violence against spouses occurs every day. | ||
| And if you as a leader are not capable of saying that physical violence against a spouse should be a disqualifying fact For being secretary of the most powerful nation in the world, you're demonstrating an astonishing lack of judgment. | ||
| The incident in Monterey led to a criminal charge, a criminal investigation, a private settlement, and a cash payment to the woman who filed the complaint. | ||
| And there was also a non-disclosure agreement, correct? | ||
| It was a confidential settlement agreement off of a nuisance lawsuit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| During an interview, you claimed that you settled the matter because you were worried that if it became public, it might hurt your career. | ||
| Do you maintain that you were blackmailed? | ||
| Senator, I maintain that false claims were made against me. | ||
| And ultimately, your attorney's false claims had the opportunity to attest my innocence in those false claims. | ||
| But you didn't reveal any of this to President Trump or the transition team as they were considering you to be nominated for Secretary of Defense. | ||
| You didn't reveal the action. | ||
| You didn't reveal the criminal complaint. | ||
| You didn't reveal the criminal investigation. | ||
| You didn't reveal the settlement. | ||
| You didn't reveal the cash payment. | ||
| Why didn't you inform the Commander-in-Chief and the transition team of this very relevant event? | ||
| Senator, I've appreciated every part of the process with the transition team. | ||
| They have been open and honest with me. | ||
| We've had great conversations between the two of us, and I appreciate the opportunity that President-elect. | ||
| But you chose not to reveal this, right? | ||
| Because you knew it would hurt your chances. | ||
| So you chose not to reveal this really important thing to the commander-in-chief and the transition team because you were worried about your chances rather than trying to be candid with the future president of the United States. | ||
| Are there any other important facts that you chose not to reveal to the president-elect and his team as they were considering you to be secretary of defense? | ||
| Senator, I sit here before you an open book, as everyone who's watched this process. | ||
| With multiple non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements tying the hands of many people who would like to comment to us. | ||
| Much has been made of your workplace behavior as a leader of nonprofit veterans organizations and as a Fox News contributor. | ||
| Were you fired from either of the leadership positions with the nonprofits? | ||
| I was the leader. | ||
| I was the CEO of Commissioner. | ||
| Command Henry Witch America, those active directors. | ||
| Were you fired? | ||
| Were you fired from either of them? | ||
| I was never fired from a non-disclosure agreements with either of those organizations? | ||
| Not that I'm aware of, Senator. | ||
| Many of your work colleagues have said that you show up for work under the influence of alcohol or drunk. | ||
| I know you've denied that, but you would agree with me, right, that if that was the case, that would be disqualifying for somebody to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Senator, those are all anonymous false claims, and the totality of the- They're not anonymous. | ||
| The letters on the record here are on the record people. | ||
| We've seen records with names attached to the French Freedom, Concern Vets for America, and Fox News. | ||
| One of your colleagues working hard every day on behalf of the Connecticut. | ||
| One of your colleagues said that you got drunk at an event at a bar and chanted, kill all Muslims. | ||
| Another colleague, not anonymous, we have this, said that you took coworkers to a strip club. | ||
| You were drunk. | ||
| You tried to dance with strippers. | ||
| You had to be held off the stage. | ||
| And one of your employees in that event filed a sexual harassment charge as a result of it. | ||
| Now, I know you denied these things, but isn't that the kind of behavior that, if true, would be disqualifying for somebody to be Secretary of Defense? | ||
| Senator, anonymous false charges. | ||
| They're not anonymous. | ||
| And I'll just conclude and say this to the chairman. | ||
| You claimed that this was all anonymous. | ||
| We have seen records with names attached to all of these, including the name of your own mother. | ||
| So don't make this into some anonymous press thing. | ||
| We have seen multiple names of colleagues consistently throughout your career that have talked about your abusive actions. | ||
| I think he's over his time. | ||
| He's a very time. | ||
| He's way over his time. | ||
| I now yield. | ||
| And thank you very much. | ||
| I now ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a family court order concerning the appointment of parenting time between Mr. Hegseth and Mrs. Samantha Hegset. | ||
| It states that there were no claims of domestic abuse or probable evidence of abuse in the relationship. | ||
|
Rules We Swear To Defend
00:14:48
|
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| Without objection, that will be added to the record. | ||
| And we now move to Senator Kramer. | ||
| Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hakeseth, for your service, for your willingness to endure this. | ||
| And I'm sorry for what has been happening to you, particularly the very idea that you should have to sit there and answer hypothetical potential, in somebody's imagination, crimes that may take place at some point. | ||
| And wouldn't that disqualify you if you were a murderer or if you were a rapist? | ||
| Unfair, unfair, and I'm embarrassed for this behavior. | ||
| But first, I want to say thank you for your strong proclamation, unapologetic proclamation of faith in Jesus Christ. | ||
| I sat here and listened to your opening statement and thought, wow, this is a guy who in today's culture is willing to stand up and say the first thing is first, faith in Jesus Christ. | ||
| And I was reminded of what Christ said in Matthew, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you. | ||
| You are going to have a great future as our secretary. | ||
| And I look forward to that day happening. | ||
| I also want to get back to you. | ||
| You mentioned, and it got rather dismissed quickly, pivoted, as a lot of things do. | ||
| You'd mentioned that you were not able to serve with your National Guard unit in the protection of the inauguration of Joe Biden because of a tattoo, a Christian tattoo. | ||
| Can you elaborate just a little bit on what is this very offensive, extremist, racist tattoo that you have? | ||
| It's a tattoo I have right here, Senator. | ||
| It's called the Jerusalem Cross. | ||
| It's a historic Christian symbol. | ||
| In fact, interestingly, recently I attended briefly the memorial ceremony of former President Jimmy Carter on the floor of our National Cathedral on the front page of his program was the very same Jerusalem cross. | ||
| It is a Christian religious symbol. | ||
| And when the events happened before preceding the Biden inauguration, I was a part of the mobilization to defend that inauguration as someone who'd been a proud supporter of Donald Trump, but also a member of the military. | ||
| Had orders to come to Washington, D.C. to guard that inauguration. | ||
| And at the last minute, those orders were revoked. | ||
| I've never had orders revoked before. | ||
| I'd been on orders to a lot of places to do a lot of difficult and dangerous things. | ||
| They were revoked, and I was not told why. | ||
| Later, when I wrote my book, I was able to get information. | ||
| It was because I had been identified. | ||
| Someone who'd served in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo Bay, holding a riot shield outside the White House, I'd been identified as an extremist, someone unworthy of guarding the inauguration of an incoming American president. | ||
| And if that's happening to me, Senator, how many other men and women, how many other patriots, how many other people of conscience, we haven't even talked about COVID and the tens of thousands of service members who were kicked out because of an experimental vaccine in President Trump's Defense Department. | ||
| They will be apologized to. | ||
| They will be reinstituted with pay and rank. | ||
| Things like focusing on extremism, Senator, have created a climate inside our ranks that feel political when it hasn't ever been political. | ||
| Those are the types of things that are going to change. | ||
| And Senator Sullivan, you mentioned that study. | ||
| After a whole study was held, extremism working group study, 100 extremists were identified in the ranks of 3 million. | ||
| And most of those were gang-related. | ||
| This was a made-up boogeyman to begin with. | ||
| You, Mr. Hagseth, are not the extremists. | ||
| The people who would deny you your expression of faith are the extremists. | ||
| They're the racists. | ||
| They're the bigots. | ||
| You're the one that is protecting their right to be one. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| I want to go to another point in your opening statement. | ||
| And it's summarized in this beautiful one-sentence paragraph. | ||
| You said, quote, leaders at all levels will be held accountable. | ||
| And warfighting and lethality and the readiness of the troops and their families will be our only focus. | ||
| At that moment, in my mind's eye, I heard soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors, guardians from the Pentagon to the Pacific and everywhere in between applaud. | ||
| Applaud. | ||
| And they're thinking, it's about time I can get on board with that idea. | ||
| And quite honestly, and I want to get to this because I think it's so important. | ||
| I would say, I don't know, just about every, maybe everyone, I'm trying to think of an exception to this, that wears the uniform that has ever come before this committee or that I've met with privately, publicly, that I've been on tours with, that I've traveled with, that wear the uniform, whether it's with four stars or no stars, agrees with that statement. | ||
| And I just want to caution you, and I'd be interested in your feedback on this. | ||
| You know, there's been a lot of talk about firing woke generals, creating the purge group and all those things you and I have talked about. | ||
| I would say give those men and women a chance under new leadership. | ||
| You know, my favorite painting in the rotunda is of George Washington retiring his commission, establishing on day one, a man who could have been king, chose to be a civilian leader of this country. | ||
| And I just would encourage you to trust them first and look forward to them saluting the civilian leadership of this country. | ||
| So just maybe if you could spend a minute just elaborating a little bit about the wokeness, where it comes from, and who will be held accountable. | ||
| The wokeness comes not from the uniform ranked, Senator, but from the political class. | ||
| On day one, on January 20th, when President Trump is sworn in, he will issue a new set of lawful orders. | ||
| And the leadership of our services will have an opportunity to follow those lawful orders or not. | ||
| Those lawful orders will not be based on politics. | ||
| They will be based on readiness, accountability, standards, and lethality. | ||
| That is the process by which leaders will be judged. | ||
| And accountability is coming because everybody in this room knows if you're a rifleman and you lose your rifle, they're throwing the book at you. | ||
| But if you're a general who loses a war, you get a promotion. | ||
| That's not going to happen in Donald Trump's Pentagon. | ||
| There will be real standards for success. | ||
| Everyone from the top, from the most senior general to the most lowly private, will ensure that they're treated fairly, men and women, inside that system. | ||
| I also just want to commend you for your answers to Senator Fisher's questions about nuclear deterrence. | ||
| But I also appreciate the fact that you emphasize reputational deterrence because deterrence is not a weapon system. | ||
| It is an attitude. | ||
| And you project an attitude of deterrence. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Kraiber. | ||
| Senator King. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Hessek, welcome to the committee. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've made several references to your religion today. | |
| I share that devotion to Christianity. | ||
| But I must say I've been reminded somewhat of Saul on his way to Damascus. | ||
| You seem to have been converted over the last several weeks and several months. | ||
| You wrote in your book just last year that, but if we're going to, this is the book, War on Warriors, but if we're going to send our boys to fight, and it should be boys, we need to unleash them to win. | ||
| Later on, our boys should not fight by rules written by dignified men. | ||
| Which is it? | ||
| Is it only boys can fight? | ||
| I mean, you've testified here today that you believe in women in combat, but you didn't just last year. | ||
| How do you explain your conversion? | ||
| Senator, my testimony is clear. | ||
| Writing a book is different than being Secretary of Defense, and I look forward to leading the men and women of our military. | ||
| And my comment there, Senator, was about the burdensome rules of engagement that members of our generation, men and women, have seen on the battlefield. | ||
| And one thing President Trump changed in meaningful ways that led to meaningful developments on the battlefield. | ||
| When President Trump took control in the first term, ISIS was raging across Iraq. | ||
| And as someone who spent a lot of time there with other men and women who invested in that mission, it was a very difficult moment to see the black flag of ISIS fly. | ||
| And what President Trump did was untie hands of warfare fighting. | ||
| He changed the rules of engagement, untied the hands of warfighters, and allowed them to complete their mission and crush ISIS. | ||
| It has not just tactical implications, operational and strategic implications, how you allow warfighters to go about winning and fighting their wars. | ||
| President Trump understands that, and within the laws of war and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, we are going to unleash warfighters to win wars so that wars don't drag on forever, as our generation has seen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So are you rejecting Title 18 and Title 42, I think, also has provisions that incorporate the Geneva Convention and the laws of armed combat? | |
| Are you saying that those laws should be repealed? | ||
| That is the law of the land right now. | ||
| Senator, we have laws on the books from the Geneva Conventions into the Uniform Code of Military Justice. | ||
| And then underneath that, you have layers in which standard or temporary rules of engagement are put into place. | ||
| We fight enemies also, Senator, as our generation understands, that play by no rules. | ||
| They use civilians as human shields. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So are you saying that the Geneva Convention should not be found? | |
| We follow rules. | ||
| We follow rules, but we don't need burdensome rules of engagement that make it impossible for us to win these wars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're saying two different things. | |
| You're saying we follow rules, but we don't have to follow the rules in all cases. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Senator, I'm making. | ||
| Senator, I'm making an important tactical distinction that warfighters will understand, that there are the rules we swear an oath to defend, which are incredibly important, and this committee understands and helps set them. | ||
| And then there are those echelons above reality from, you know, Corps to division to brigade to battalion. | ||
| And by the time it trickles down to a company or a platoon or a squad level, you have a rules of engagement that nobody recognizes. | ||
| And then it makes you incredibly difficult to actually do your job on the battlefield. | ||
| That's the kind of assessment and look that an Army major will give to this process if I was confirmed to be the Senate. | ||
| Your quote is true understanding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your quote in 2024, our boys should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms 80 years ago. | |
| That would be the Geneva Convention. | ||
| America should fight by its own rules, and we should fight to win or not go in at all. | ||
| Are you saying that the Geneva Convention provisions, which clearly outlaw torture of prisoners, do not, should not apply in the future? | ||
| Senator, how we treat our wounded, how we treat our prisoners, the applications of the Javina Conventions are incredibly important. | ||
| But we would all have to acknowledge that the way we fought our wars back when the Geneva Conventions were written are a lot different than the asymmetric, non-conventional environment of counterinsurgency that I confronted in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| I was the senior counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. | ||
| My job was to understand how the Taliban and Al-Qaeda operated so that NATO units coming in could be informed of what was happening. | ||
| They knew our rules of engagement, and when they were more restrictive, they took advantage of them, and it put our men and women in a more dangerous and difficult place. | ||
| For future wars we fight, we need to have someone atop the Pentagon, sir, who understands how those ripple effects are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I just want to understand your position. | |
| Your position is torture is okay. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Waterboarding, torture is no longer prohibited given the circumstances of whatever war we're in. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Senator, that is not what I said. | ||
| I've never been party to torture. | ||
| We are a country that fights by the rule of law, and our men and women always do. | ||
| And yet we have too many people here in air-conditioned offices that like to point fingers at the guys in dark and dangerous places, the gals in helicopters in enemy territory who are doing things that people in Washington, D.C. would never dare to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or send, in many cases, in one of your interviews, you said they're willing to do this. | |
| You're talking about Donald Trump and Trump and Senator Cruz. | ||
| They're willing to do something like waterboarding if it's going to keep us safe. | ||
| Are you okay with waterboarding? | ||
| Senator, the law of the land is that waterboarding is not legal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the statement that you made, you now recant. | |
| Is that correct? | ||
| They are willing to do something like waterboarding if it's going to keep us safe. | ||
| You express that with approval. | ||
| Senator, I'm very familiar with that as a concept, having spent a year at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, guarding 700 of those that attacked us on 9-11. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to be clear. | |
| Are we going to abide by the Geneva Convention and the prohibitions on torture, or are we not? | ||
| Is it going to have circumstances? | ||
| As I've stated multiple times, the Geneva Conventions are what we base our. | ||
| But what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield. | ||
| America First understands we send Americans for a clear mission and a clear objective. | ||
| We equip them properly for that objective. | ||
| We give them everything they need. | ||
| And then we stand behind them with the rules of engagement that allow them to fight decisively against America's enemies, which is why we say that we have to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just have a few seconds left, Mr. Koffe. | |
| I was very disturbed in your opening statement where you talked about the priorities that you have. | ||
| We will work with our partners and allies to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific from the Communist Chinese. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There is not a single mention in this statement about Ukraine or Russia. | |
|
Urgency in Defense
00:08:34
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|
unidentified
|
Is this code for we're going to abandon Ukraine? | |
| Senator, the President, that's a presidential-level policy decision. | ||
| He's made it very clear that he would like to see an end to that conflict. | ||
| We know who the aggressor is. | ||
| We know who the good guy is. | ||
| We'd like to see it as advantageous for the Ukrainians as possible, but that war needs to come up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You talk a lot about deterrence of China. | |
| I would submit that Xi Jinping is watching what we do very carefully. | ||
| If we abandon Ukraine, that would be the strongest signal possible to Xi Jinping that he can take Taiwan without significant resistance from this country. | ||
| Thank you, Senator King. | ||
| Senator Scott of Florida. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record two letters which testify to Mr. Hedges' leadership record at Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| The first letter submitted by Mr. Darren Selnick, a senior advisor at CFA, stated that there's been no better leader, policy champion, or fighter for the military and veterans than Pete. | ||
| He was instrumental in 2014 and 2017 in ensuring that veterans had health care choice. | ||
| The second letter submitted by Mr. Casey Sparow, Digital Media Director of CBA from 2015 to 2017, stated, Pete brought incredible energy, focus, and a clear vision to the organization and showed everything that the team accomplished together. | ||
| And I similarly asked to submit to the record a letter from Paul J. Roberts, retired Colonel, U.S. Army Special Forces, speaking to the unwavering integrity of Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Is there objection? | ||
| Without objection, those three will be admitted. | ||
| Senator Scott. | ||
| First, congratulations on your nomination. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And thank you for being willing to serve our nation. | ||
| I served in the Navy. | ||
| I'm really proud of my dad. | ||
| He was crazy. | ||
| He did awful combat jumps with the 82nd Airborne. | ||
| He, after that, survived all that and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. | ||
| And what they went through, it was hell. | ||
| So I have a lot of respect for him and for everybody that puts on the uniform and serves in battle and has to lead people in battle. | ||
| Because being on a ship, that didn't happen to me, but I had a lot of friends that happened to him. | ||
| It clearly happened to my dad. | ||
| I've served on this committee for six years, two years under President Trump and the past four under President Joe Biden. | ||
| I've seen how the Biden-Harris administration pushed the DOD to prioritize wokeness over being the most lethal military force in the world. | ||
| It's our readiness, our national security, and our ability to recruit people who are willing to put their lives on the line for our country. | ||
| Can you talk about some of the changes we can make to improve recruitment and rebuild our military into the most lethal force in the world? | ||
| First of all, Senator, thank you for the question. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| I think the first and most important thing we could have done is elect Donald Trump as the new commander-in-chief. | ||
| Because past his prologue, our warfighters understand what kind of commander-in-chief they're going to get in President Donald Trump, someone who stands behind them, someone who gives them clear missions, someone who ends wars decisively. | ||
| And the issue of Ukraine was mentioned and ensures new wars are not started. | ||
| There was a minor incursion under Barack Obama into Crimea, followed by nothing under President Trump, followed by an all-out assault by Vladimir Putin into Ukraine under the Biden administration. | ||
| That did not happen under Donald Trump. | ||
| Donald Trump managed the Taliban. | ||
| Under the Biden administration, Afghanistan collapsed tragically, ending the lives of 13 at Abbey Gate, who we remember every single day, and no one was held accountable for that. | ||
| Chinese spy balloons were flying over the country. | ||
| None of that happened under Donald Trump, and our warfighters understand that. | ||
| So there's no better recruiter, in my mind, for our military than President Donald Trump. | ||
| My job is to come alongside him, should I be confirmed, and continue to emphasize his emphasis on warfighting, on getting anything that doesn't contribute to meritocracy out of how decisions are made inside the Pentagon. | ||
| What gender you are, what race you are, your views on climate change, or whether you are a person of conscience and your faith should have no bearing on whether you get promoted or whether you're selected to go to West Point or whether you graduate from Ranger School. | ||
| The only thing that should matter is how capable are you at your job? | ||
| How excellent are you at your job? | ||
| I served in multi-ethnic units in every place that I were, every place that I served. | ||
| None of that mattered. | ||
| But suddenly we re-inject DEI and critical race theory, dividing troops into different categories, oppressor and oppressed, in ways that they otherwise just want to work together. | ||
| That's why I've pointed out before, and I'll say it again, because I'm sure it'll be quoted to me at some point. | ||
| The dumbest phrase in military history is our unity is our strength. | ||
| No, our shared purpose is our strength. | ||
| Our shared mission is our strength. | ||
| We are one DOD community of all, committed to the same mission. | ||
| It has nothing to do with your background. | ||
| It has to do with what your commitment is to the country. | ||
| And that is my solemn pledge to every single person that would put the uniform on and reflects President Trump's priorities as well, Senator. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, we talked a little bit about the fact the Pentagon can't do an audit. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Can you talk about, and to me, I've run big businesses. | ||
| It's all about accountability. | ||
| If you want to get an audit done, you can get an audit done. | ||
| You might get a letter saying there's things you have to fix, but it all goes to accountability, and we haven't had it. | ||
| So can you talk about how you bring accountability to the table, what you've done in the past, and what you're going to do with regard to bringing accountability to the Pentagon? | ||
| I meant it when I said it in the opening statement, Senator. | ||
| I know what I don't know. | ||
| I know I've never run an organization of 3 million people with a budget of $850 billion. | ||
| But what I do know is that I've led men and women. | ||
| I've led people. | ||
| And it's leadership of people and motivation of people and a clear vision of people where you build a team, cast that vision, empower people properly. | ||
| I want smarter and more capable people around me than me. | ||
| And you will get that at the department. | ||
| I cast the clear vision, build the plan, work it. | ||
| We set the metrics, and everyone is held accountable. | ||
| I know our business, incoming businessman president, believes in accountability and holding people accountable. | ||
| That will happen at the Pentagon. | ||
| I mean, this has been a problem for a long time. | ||
| Secretary Rumsfeld gave a speech on September 10th, 2001, that's mostly forgotten. | ||
| But it was about the need for acquisition reform, cutting tail to give to teeth to warfighters. | ||
| And then 9-11 happened. | ||
| And these are problems that have been persistent for a long time. | ||
| But now we have new threats. | ||
| And we need the urgency of this moment. | ||
| As you said, Mr. Chairman, the most dangerous moment we've been since the end of the Cold War and possibly since World War II. | ||
| The urgency to do everything possible to get the capabilities into the hands of warfighters, emergency powers, Defense Production Act, whatever it takes, and an audit is certainly part of it. | ||
| Why do you want to do this? | ||
| Why do you want to do this job? | ||
| What drives you? | ||
| You have 30 seconds. | ||
| You're doing it. | ||
| Because I love my country, Senator, and I've dedicated my life to the warfighters. | ||
| People see me as someone who hosts a morning show on television. | ||
| But people that really know me know where my heart's at. | ||
| It's with the guys in this audience who've had my back, and I've had theirs. | ||
| We've been in some of the darkest and most difficult places you can ever be in. | ||
| You come back a different person. | ||
| And only by the grace of God am I here before you today. | ||
| I'm doing this job for them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For all of them. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Hexet. | ||
| Senator Warren. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And Mr. Hegseth, thank you. | ||
| Thank you for your service. | ||
| So if you're confirmed as Secretary of Defense, you will oversee our military, including about a quarter of a million women who currently serve on active duty in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Space Forces, and the Marines. | ||
|
32 Days Of Quoting
00:14:16
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| And I have serious concerns that your behavior toward women disqualifies you from serving in this role. | ||
| Now, I've been trying to get answers from you for quite some time on this. | ||
| You haven't wanted to meet or to answer any of my questions. | ||
| So we'll just have to do it here and dive in. | ||
| I want to pick up on some of the questions asked by Senators Shaheen and Jill Bran and Hirono. | ||
| And I just want to make sure we have a list of some of the facts that I think are undisputed. | ||
| I'm not going to talk about anonymous sources. | ||
| I'm just going to quote you directly. | ||
| We've got the video. | ||
| We've got it in print. | ||
| So going back to January 2013, you told a Fox News interviewer that women in the military simply couldn't measure up to men in the military, saying that allowing women to serve in combat roles would force the military to lower the bar. | ||
| You picked up on that same theme in 2015, making remarks on Fox News, referring to women in combat as, quote, erode, it would erode standards. | ||
| June 2024, you said on Ben Shapiro's podcast, quote, women shouldn't be in combat at all. | ||
| And then, of course, we've talked about it in 2024. | ||
| You published a book, and you say on page 26 of your book, we need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units. | ||
| Page 48 of your book, you claim that women should not be in combat roles because men are distracted by women. | ||
| And then 10 weeks ago, you appeared on the Sean Ryan show and said, I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. | ||
| Now, I presume you recall making all these statements. | ||
| Senator, I'm not familiar with the article you're pointing to in 2013, but it underscores my argument completely because in that 2013 argument, I was talking about standards. | ||
| Standards are what it's always been about. | ||
| It's always been about standards. | ||
| I've quoted you directly. | ||
| We've got the video. | ||
| We're happy to show it. | ||
| But I want to be clear here. | ||
| For 12 years, you were quite open about your views, and your views were consistently the same. | ||
| Women are inferior soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and guardians. | ||
| And in case anyone missed the point, and these are your words from 10 weeks ago, women absolutely, straight up, should not be permitted to serve in combat. | ||
| And I notice on each of these quotes, those are said without qualification. | ||
| It's not by how much you can lift or how fast you can run. | ||
| They don't belong in combat, period. | ||
| Or your words, straight up. | ||
| And then, on November 9th, 2024, just 32 days after your last public comment saying that women absolutely should not be in combat, you declared that, quote, some of our greatest warriors are women, and you support having them serve in combat. | ||
| Now, that is a very, very big about face in a very, very short period of time. | ||
| So help me understand, Mr. Hagseth, what extraordinary event happened in that 32-day period that made you change the core values you had expressed for the preceding 12 years. | ||
| Senator, again, I very much appreciate you bringing up my comments from 2013 because for me, this issue has always been about standards. | ||
| And unfortunately, because of some of the people that have been in the middle of the state of the world. | ||
| Excuse me, Mr. Hagseth, let's just stop. | ||
| Let's just stop. | ||
| Priorities should be a mentality and marriage. | ||
| Mr. Hagseth, I'm quoting you, I'm quoting you from the podcast. | ||
| Women shouldn't be in combat at all. | ||
| Where is the reference to standards that they should be there if they can carry, if they can run? | ||
| I don't see that at all, Mr. Hagseth. | ||
| What I see is that there's a 32-day period in which you suddenly have another description about your views of women in the military. | ||
| And I just want to know what changed in the 32 days that the song you sang is not the song you come in here today to sing. | ||
| Senator, the concerns I have and the concerns that many have had, especially in ground combat units, is that in pursuit of certain percentages or quotas, standards have been changed. | ||
| And that makes the combat more difficult. | ||
| Let me make a suggestion about what happened in that 32 days. | ||
| You got a nomination from President Trump. | ||
| Now, I've heard of deathbed conversions, but this is the first time I've heard of a nomination conversion. | ||
| And I hope you understand that many women serving in the military right now might think that if you can convert so rapidly your long-held and aggressively pursued views in just 32 days, that 32 days after you get confirmed, maybe you'll just reverse those views and go back to the old guy who said straight up, women do not belong in combat. | ||
| Now, Mr. Hagstaff, you have written that after they retire, generals should be banned from working for the defense industry for 10 years. | ||
| You and I agree on the corrosive effects of the revolving door between the Pentagon and defense contractors. | ||
| It's something I would have liked to talk to you about if you'd come and been willing to visit with me. | ||
| But the question I have for you on this is: will you put your money where your mouth is and agree that when you leave this job, you will not work for the defense industry for 10 years? | ||
| Senator, it's not even a question I've thought about because think about it right now. | ||
| It's not one. | ||
| My motivation for this job. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| I just need a yes or no here. | ||
| Time is short. | ||
| I just need a yes or no. | ||
| I would consult with the president about what the policy is. | ||
| In other words, you're quite sure that every general who serves should not go directly into the defense industry for 10 years. | ||
| You're not willing to make that same pledge. | ||
| I'm not a general, Senator. | ||
| You'll be the one, let us just be clear, in charge of the generals. | ||
| So you're saying sauce for the goose, but certainly not sauce for the gander. | ||
| I would want to see what the policy of the police are. | ||
| Oh, I'll bet you would. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Warren. | ||
| Senator Tubberville. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for your hard work and your committee's hard work. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, this is going well. | ||
| I'd like to submit this letter, topic conduct at Vets for Freedom for Heckseth. | ||
| I'd like to submit that for the record, please. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| General Hagseth, I mean, Mr. Hakeseth. | ||
| Thanks for being here today and with your family. | ||
| I know this is tough. | ||
| That's what it's all about, though. | ||
| You're a tough guy. | ||
| Been here for a while. | ||
| Never seen this many people that are here for a support of a nominee. | ||
| That's impressive. | ||
| I met with a lot of them yesterday, and they are very passionate. | ||
| So thank you for willing to take this on. | ||
| And congratulations on your nomination. | ||
| I'm worried about recruiting. | ||
| I mean, we can look at everything out there and talk about all these things, these narratives, but at the end of the day, I came from a team sport where the people, the players, actually won the games. | ||
| And that's what's going to happen here. | ||
| You're not going to win the game. | ||
| Now, you're going to set the precedent. | ||
| You're going to get the blame or the credit, but there's going to be people that's going to be under you that's going to set the precedent for the future of our country. | ||
| Now, the war games that we play on our computers with our adversaries right now, for us, it don't look good because our military. | ||
| We're in trouble. | ||
| Our whole country's in trouble. | ||
| Thank God President Trump got elected November the 5th. | ||
| We couldn't have kept down this same path. | ||
| We could not, that could not happen. | ||
| I met with a general, a couple of generals this summer. | ||
| Coach, we're spending more money on transgender restrooms than we are coverings for $100 million airplanes. | ||
| That's not acceptable. | ||
| We can't do that. | ||
| That's not what this is about. | ||
| Met with a couple of Navy SEALs not too long ago. | ||
| They just got back from crawling around in the mud and the muck, overseas, unknown places. | ||
| Couldn't tell you where they've been, carrying a weapon, obviously protecting us and our allies. | ||
| And the first week they're back. | ||
| What'd they do? | ||
| They had to go through a week of DEI training. | ||
| Both are now out. | ||
| They give it up. | ||
| It was embarrassing to them of what they had to do. | ||
| We've lost all sight of what we're doing in our military, lost all sight. | ||
| It starts with leadership and it starts with recruiting. | ||
| Why would a young man used to, when I was growing up, if you couldn't afford to go to college, you had the opportunity to go to the military where you could learn a trade, you could learn, you could make a living for your family and eventually possibly get an education. | ||
| That was a good alternative. | ||
| We've forgotten that. | ||
| We've forgotten it. | ||
| We can't give up on our young people. | ||
| Young people are our number one commodity in this country, and they're the ones that's going to live and die for the freedom of this country in the future. | ||
| So, again, thank you for taking this on. | ||
| Recruiting. | ||
| Our service academies are meant to serve as our primary commissioning source of officers. | ||
| It now appears that they are a breeding ground for leftist activists and champions of DEI and critical theory. | ||
| Now, not all, but some, and some is way too much. | ||
| How are we going to eliminate this, Mr. Exeter? | ||
| How are we going to get this back on track to where we grow our leaders? | ||
| I had a young man that forever wanted to go to West Point. | ||
| I got him a nomination, I got him accepted, and he turned it down. | ||
| He says, Coach, I'm not getting involved with that mess. | ||
| How are we going to overcome this? | ||
| Senator, thank you for the question. | ||
| And I think it comes down to leadership. | ||
| Clear leadership from President Trump through me, should I be nominated? | ||
| And that's what soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardians see is clear leadership. | ||
| It says, This is what we believe. | ||
| This is the commission we're going to give you. | ||
| Here's the equipment we're going to give you, and here's how we're going to support you. | ||
| Because the military, at a lot of levels, Senator, has been for generations a family business. | ||
| You know, my grandfather served. | ||
| My father served. | ||
| I served. | ||
| My daughter served. | ||
| That chain has started to break with generations of people my age and older talking to their kids and grandkids, wondering, pondering: do I want them to serve? | ||
| Will my country use them responsibly? | ||
| When that kind of doubt is cast, you get serious recruiting problems like we do right now. | ||
| You get questions about whether I want my son or daughter to follow my path in West Point, which I've heard multiple times. | ||
| Would I want my and so you have to rip root and branch the politics and divisive policies out of these institutions and then focus them on creating and preparing actual future military leadership. | ||
| West Point traditionally is focused on engineering, and rightfully so, because in our fighting forces across all services, we need the best and brightest minds in engineering in addition to military studies. | ||
| That's what I did at ROTC at Princeton: military science. | ||
| And we need more uniformed members going back into West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy, as a tour to teach with their wisdom of what they've learned in uniform, instead of just more civilian professors that came from the same left-wing woke universities that they left, and then try to push that into service academies. | ||
| When that changes, Senator, I truly believe under Donald Trump we will have a recruiting renaissance. | ||
| That sends signals to the world, to our enemies and our allies alike, that America's back. | ||
| And thankfully, then we have the men and women of our country willing to want to serve. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And it's about attitude, too. | ||
| And I love your attitude. | ||
| You've got to be motivated. | ||
| You've got to understand the people will hook up with you. | ||
| They will understand and learn under their leaders. | ||
| Why would you fight for a country that you don't love? | ||
| That's what I keep hearing from a lot of our college kids that they're getting from these woke universities that they go to. | ||
| Now, and I worked at a lot of them. | ||
| That is one of the excuses I get from our kids. | ||
| We've got to break that. | ||
| Another one, according to the Pentagon, between 2001 and 2024, the number of civilian employees in the office of the Secretary of Defense has nearly doubled from 1,500 to 3,000. | ||
| Civilians on Joint Chiefs has increased from 191 to almost 1,000. | ||
| Our military in-strength goes down. | ||
| Our staff numbers are exploding. | ||
| What are you going to do about that? | ||
| Senator, we're going to address 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. | ||
| So it's going to be my job working with those that we hire and those inside the administration to identify those places where fat can be cut so it can go toward lethality. | ||
|
Talking Qualifications?
00:10:43
|
||
| Thank you, Senator Tubberville. | ||
| Senator Peters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Strikzoff. | ||
| Welcome to this committee. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, we have far too much partisanship in our country right now. | |
| I think it's eating away at the fabric of what has always made this country great, about bringing people together from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of experiences. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we know that in our motto, together as one, we are strong. | |
| And so we and this committee, and certainly I speak for myself, but I think I speak for many of my colleagues, want to take partisanship out of this proceeding as much as we can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not naive. | |
| It's out there. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But we've got to try to take that out. | ||
| And I want you to know that I was a member of this committee. | ||
| I have voted in a bipartisan way for secretaries of defense. | ||
| I voted for two secretaries of defense when Donald Trump was previously president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We had those two. | |
| We had, I think, five total secretaries of defense during that four-year period. | ||
| So we want to keep that in mind as to what we might see in this coming administration. | ||
| But I voted, and we voted by a big margin for those folks as well. | ||
| But part of that was the process and having an opportunity to get to know the person and understand their qualifications and understand the standards. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I made repeated requests to meet with you prior to this meeting. | |
| I know many of my other colleagues also wanted to meet with you. | ||
| I did that with other nominees that I was happy to vote for. | ||
| I thought they were highly qualified individuals and true professionals. | ||
| And yet I could never get a meeting with you. | ||
| Was there a reason you were afraid to have one-on-one meetings with some of my colleagues before the hearing? | ||
| Senator, I know there was a great deal of outreach to multiple offices. | ||
| Schedules get full. | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was ready. | |
| I welcome the opportunity of my schedule to have an opportunity to sit down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was ready. | |
| It would have been so much better to have that opportunity to talk beforehand. | ||
| I think that's a big mistake, and it doesn't set us on a good course when you refuse to meet with people and have a professional conversation about the huge challenges that we face at the Department of Defense. | ||
| My colleagues, the folks who introduced you and others, the chairman has mentioned about the management of the DOD as a concern, cost overruns, delays on weapons systems. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need strong management at the Department of Defense, first and foremost. | |
| We've got to have someone who's going to grab the reins and give the taxpayers value for having the most lethal fighting force in the world that defends freedoms, but we've got to do it in an efficient way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've heard about the jobs you've had in the past. | |
| Let's just talk about qualifications. | ||
| I know you had two previous positions. | ||
| How many people reported to you in those positions? | ||
| Senator, at Vets for Freedom, we were a small upstart. | ||
| Our focus was working on Capitol Hill, going back to the battlefield. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just the number. | |
| Warfighters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just the number, please. | |
| We probably had eight to ten full-time staff and lots of volunteers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you had eight. | |
| Has there been any other? | ||
| We've heard about the two, and certainly there's been a lot of talk about the mismanagement, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| I'm just curious. | ||
| I won't go into that. | ||
| Just curious. | ||
| So you had eight there. | ||
| What's the largest number of people you've ever supervised or had in an organization in your career? | ||
| Not 3 million. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't expect that. | |
| No one, very few people have ever had that experience. | ||
| But how many? | ||
| It's a straight-up question. | ||
| I think we had over 100 full-time staff at Concerned Vets for America, roughly with thousands of volunteers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So 100 people. | |
| There's also a headquarters company commander, which would have been a couple of hundred. | ||
| Nothing remotely near the size of the Defense Department. | ||
| I would acknowledge that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, not remotely near even a medium-sized company in America, let alone a big company in America, especially a major corporation. | |
| And you're basically, we're hiring you to be the CEO of one of the most complex, largest organizations in the world. | ||
| We're the board of directors here. | ||
| I don't know of any corporate board of directors that would hire a CEO for a major company if they came and said, you know, I supervised 100 people before. | ||
| They'd ask you, well, what kind of experiences you had? | ||
| We need innovation. | ||
| Can you give me an experience or your actual experience of driving innovation in an organization? | ||
| Give me an example of where you have done that. | ||
| Oh, my goodness, Senator, absolutely. | ||
| At Concerned Veterans for America, we created the Fixing Health Veterans Healthcare Task Force, a bipartisan task force that had never been done before to create policy, to drive policy change on Capitol Hill that organizations fought ferociously against. | ||
| We've got the VA Accountability Act passed and the Mission Act passed in a way that a non-profit of our size, a veterans organization, has never done. | ||
| And it's testified in all the letters that we put forward to the committee, which are on the record. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I have limited time. | |
| Thank you for that. | ||
| Give me an example of where you've driven down cost. | ||
| I've heard the examples that Senator Blumenthal gave. | ||
| The cost was a real problem for you in your 50-person organization that actually raised a lot less than what you actually spent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you drive costs down in a 50-person organization? | |
| Let me tell you, we've got to drive costs down dramatically in an organization of 3 million people and hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| You don't have that experience that you can talk about. | ||
| To me, this is our acquisition reform. | ||
| Acquisition reform, you bring that up. | ||
| Have you had experience in acquisition reform? | ||
| I've written about and studied on acquisition reform. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have you actually done it? | |
| Because what we need in the hands of our warfighters better change because we're not doing it well right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Better. | |
| And we need people who have experience actually doing that. | ||
| You know, you talk about standards. | ||
| Again, I'm going to go back to a CEO of the most complex organization in the world. | ||
| I don't think there's a board of directors in America that would hire you as a CEO with the kind of experience you have on your resume. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You talk about standards. | |
| You talk about raising or lower that we have a problem of standards in the DOD, and we have to raise standards for the men and women who serve. | ||
| Do you think that the way to raise the minimum standards of the people who serve us is to lower the standards for the Secretary of Defense that we have someone who has never managed an organization, more than 100 people, is going to come in and manage this incredibly important organization and do it with the professionalism and has no experience that they can tell us that they have actually done that? | ||
| I have real problems with that. | ||
| This is not about other issues that are brought up. | ||
| They're all very important. | ||
| I'm just about trying to get things done, managing efficiently, and having the best people who have demonstrated that in a large organization. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm sorry, but I don't see that in your background. | |
| There are a lot of other things you can do very well. | ||
| You're a capable person. | ||
| But I'm not, I do not, you have not convinced me that you're able to take on this tremendous responsibility with a complex organization and having little or no significant management experience. | ||
| Senator, I'm grateful to be hired by one of the most successful CEOs in American history, should I be confirmed? | ||
| Mr. Hague said that it it seems to me that you've supervised far more people than the average United States senator supervises. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And except for except for former governors, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Senator Mullen, I understand you are yielding back your time and do not wish to ask questions. | ||
| I was misinformed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Am I right? | |
| Senator Mullen. | ||
| Caught me totally off guard there. | ||
| I'd like to submit for the record signatures by 32 members of the House of Representatives who are veterans. | ||
| The signatures call on the Senate to honor the constitutional duty of advising consent by conducting a fair, thorough confirmation process that evaluates his nomination solely on substance and merits. | ||
| His distinguished military service, academic credentials, and a bold vision for revitalizing the national defense, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| You know, there's a lot of talk going about talking about qualifications and then about us hiring him if we are the board, but there's a lot of senators here I wouldn't have on my board because there is no qualifications except your age and you've got to be living in the state and you're a citizen of the United States to be a senator. | ||
| Other than the fact, we've got to convince a lot of people to vote for us. | ||
| And then when we start talking about qualifications for if you're qualified for it, could the chairman tell me what the qualifications are for the Secretary of Defense? | ||
| Mr. Chairman, could you tell me what the qualifications are for the Secretary of Defense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd be happy for you to talk about it. | |
| Let me read it for you. | ||
| I was getting some advice from your second in command. | ||
| Yeah, but I'm just making a point because there's a lot about qualifications. | ||
| And I think it's so hypocritical of senators, especially on the other side of the aisle, to be talking about his qualifications, not going to lead the Secretary or be the Secretary of Defense, and yet your qualifications aren't any better. | ||
| You guys aren't any more qualified to be the senator than I'm qualified to be the senator, except we're lucky enough to be here. | ||
| But let me read you what the qualifications of the Secretary of Defense is, because I Googled it and I Googled it and went through a lot of different sites. | ||
| And really, it's hard to see. | ||
| But in general, the U.S. Secretary of Defense position is filled by a civilian. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| If you have served in the U.S. Army forces and have been in the service for, you have to be retired for at least seven years, and Congress can weigh that. | ||
| And then there's questions that the senator from Massachusetts brought up about serving on a board inside the military industry, and yet your own secretary that you all voted for, Secretary of Austin, we had to vote on a waiver because he stepped off the board of Raytheon. | ||
| But I guess that's okay because that's a Democrat Secretary of Defense. | ||
|
Forgiving Mistakes
00:03:02
|
||
| But you so quickly forget about that. | ||
| And then, Senator Kane, or I guess I better use the senator from Virginia, starts bringing up the fact that what if you showed up drunk to your job? | ||
| How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night? | ||
| Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign for their job? | ||
| And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have. | ||
| And then, how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives? | ||
| Did you ask them to step down? | ||
| No. | ||
| But it's for show. | ||
| You guys make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man's made a mistake. | ||
| And you want to sit there and say that he's not qualified? | ||
| Give me a joke. | ||
| It is so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself at this higher standard and you forget you got a big plank in your eye. | ||
| We've all made mistakes. | ||
| I've made mistakes. | ||
| And Jennifer, thank you for loving him through that mistake. | ||
| Because the only reason why I'm here and not in prison is because my wife loved me too. | ||
| I have changed, but I'm not perfect. | ||
| But I found somebody that thought I was perfect. | ||
| And for whatever reason, you love Pete, and I don't know why. | ||
| But just like our Lord and Savior forgave me, my wife's had to forgive me more than once too, and I'm sure you've had to forgive him too. | ||
| And so thank you. | ||
| So before I go down this rabbit hole again, tell me something about your wife that you love. | ||
| She's the smartest, most capable, loving, humble, honest person I've ever met. | ||
| In addition to being incredibly beautiful. | ||
| Don't forget about your kids. | ||
| I'm supposed to talk about my kids. | ||
| No, no, well, she's also the mother. | ||
| Oh, an amazing mother of our blended family of seven kids. | ||
| Brother, I'm pulling you slow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm trying to help you here. | |
| You know, do you believe that you're going to be running the Secretary or the Department of Defense by yourself? | ||
| Senator, absolutely not. | ||
| Just as President Trump is assembling his cabinet, I look forward and already am in the process of building one of the best possible teams you can imagine with decades and decades of experience outside of the Pentagon, driving innovation and excellence, and also inside the building, knowing how to make it happen. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So in your organizations that you did have the privilege of running, did you have a board that you in both organizations we had a board, yes. | ||
|
Audit Insights for Defense
00:15:45
|
||
| Okay, and what did you do with that board? | ||
| What kind of decisions did you make with them? | ||
| Those boards provided oversight and insight into decision-making. | ||
| They all have special unique sets that maybe filled gaps that you're not the expertise in? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So do you believe you're capable of surrounding yourself with capable individuals that you're going to be able to run those same ideas by and surround yourself with people that are smarter and better equipped and maybe areas that you don't necessarily carry those expertise with? | ||
| Senator, the only reason I've had success in life to include my wonderful wife is because of people more capable around me and having the self-confidence to empower them and say, hey, run with the ball. | ||
| Run with the football. | ||
| Take it down the field. | ||
| We'll do this together. | ||
| I don't care who gets the credit. | ||
| And in this case, that's how the Pentagon will be run. | ||
| Let me end with this, Mr. Chairman, about the qualifications. | ||
| You got a man who has literally put his butt on the line, who served 20 years in service, multiple deployments, has heard the bullets crack over the top of his head, has been willing to go into combat, been willing to see friends die for this country. | ||
| And he's willing to still put himself through this. | ||
| His wife is willing to still stand beside him, knowing he wasn't perfect, knowing that all this was going to be brought up. | ||
| He's still willing to serve the country. | ||
| What other qualifications does he need? | ||
| With that, I yield back. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Mullen. | ||
| Senator Dougworth. | ||
| And again, we really are going to strictly enforce the rule about no demonstrations or noise. | ||
| The distinguished ranking member. | ||
| Just a point of personal privilege to make a correction. | ||
| The reason that General Orson required a waiver was not because of his participation in a corporate enterprise. | ||
| It was because he did not have seven years of interruption between his service and his appointment. | ||
| Second point is that if any of us were appointed as Secretary of Defense, we would be subject to the same types of questions. | ||
| And the case in point is Senator John Tao was nominated for Secretary of Defense. | ||
| It was discovered by his colleagues that his behavior was not commensurate with the responsibilities despite his service, and he was voted down. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Senator Duckworth, you are recognized. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And also, Secretary Mattis had to have this waiver as well. | ||
| Mr. Heckset, this hearing is about whether you are qualified to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| And one of the qualifications to answer my colleague's question is to actually win the votes of every member of this committee and to be confirmed by the United States Senate. | ||
| And you need to convince us that you're worthy of that vote because the people of the state of Illinois voted for me to be their senator so that I could cast that vote when it comes to picking who is going to be the next Secretary of Defense. | ||
| This hearing now seems to be a hearing about whether or not women are qualified to serve in combat and not about whether or not you are qualified to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| And let me just say that the American people need a SEC dev who's ready to lead on day one. | ||
| You are not that person. | ||
| Our adversaries watch closely during times of transition. | ||
| And any sense that the Department of Defense that keeps us safe is being steered by someone who's wholly unprepared for the job puts America at risk. | ||
| And I am not willing to do that. | ||
| With that in mind, Mr. Hecksteth, I want you to try to explain to the American people, this committee, who have to vote for you, and to our troops who are deployed around the world, why you are qualified to lead the Department of Defense. | ||
| We already know that you've only led the largest, a 200-person organization. | ||
| We already know that you so badly mangoed a budget that after you left, they had to bring in a forensic accountant to figure out what went wrong. | ||
| And that the largest budget you ever managed was about $18 billion. | ||
| You know, that is about 51,560 times fewer, lower than the Department of Defense budget of $825 billion. | ||
| $16 million is 51,568 times smaller than the defense budget. | ||
| Please describe to me, Mr. Hegseth, you talk about DOD passing an audit. | ||
| Please describe to me a time or an organization when you that you led underwent an audit because you say you're going to hire smarter people than you to run this audit. | ||
| I'm not asking you to be an accountant. | ||
| I want you to be able to tell me what kind of guidance will be given to those employees, what will happen whether or not you pass that audit. | ||
| Have you led an audit of any organization? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| I don't want a long answer. | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Have you led an audit of any organization of which you were in charge? | ||
| Senator, in both of the organizations I ran, we were always completely fiscally responsible. | ||
| Yes or no, did you lead an audit? | ||
|
unidentified
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And the way that you lead an audit is completely. | |
| What are you doing off? | ||
| You can't answer this question. | ||
| Yes or no, did you lead an audit? | ||
| Do you not know this answer? | ||
| Senator Williams. | ||
| Yes or no. | ||
| I will take that as a no. | ||
| What were the findings? | ||
| So there were no findings because you've never led an audit. | ||
| What guidance did you give the auditors? | ||
| None, because you've never led an audit. | ||
| Nobody expects you to be an accountant, Mr. Heckseth. | ||
| What we expect is for you to understand the complexity of this Pentagon budget process that is absolutely necessary to outfit our warfighters. | ||
| Look, the Secretary of Defense is required to make quick decisions every single day with high-level information that's being provided for them. | ||
| A Secretary of Defense has to have breadth and depth of knowledge. | ||
| Right now, I am concerned that you have neither. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, what is the highest level of international negotiations that you have engaged in, that you've led in? | ||
| Because the Secretary of Defense does lead international security negotiations. | ||
| There are three main ones that the Secretary of Defense leads and signs. | ||
| Can you name at least one of them? | ||
| Could you repeat the question, Senator? | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| What is the highest level of international security agreement that you have led? | ||
| And can you name some that the Secretary of Defense would lead? | ||
| There's three main ones. | ||
| I have not been involved in international security arrangements because I have not been in government other than serving in the military. | ||
| So my job has been to. | ||
| So no. | ||
|
unidentified
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Can you name one of the three main ones that the Secretary of Defense? | |
| NATO might be one of one that you're referring to. | ||
| Status of Forces Agreement would be one of them. | ||
| Status of Forces Agreement. | ||
| I've been a part of teaching about status of forces agreements. | ||
| But you don't remember to mention it? | ||
| You're not qualified, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| You're not qualified. | ||
| You talk about repairing our defense industrial complex. | ||
| You're not qualified to do that. | ||
| You could do the acquisition and cross-servicing agreements, which essentially are security agreements. | ||
| You can't even mention that. | ||
| You've done none of those. | ||
| You talked about the Indo-Pacific a little bit, and I'm glad that you mentioned it. | ||
| Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in the ASEAN in ASEAN and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations? | ||
| And how many nations are in ASEAN, by the way? | ||
| I couldn't tell you the exact same thing. | ||
| But I know we have allies in South Korea and Japan and in AUKUS with Australia trying to work on submarines within the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in allies across. | |
| None of those three countries that you've mentioned are in ASEAN. | ||
| I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations. | ||
| Luxen. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, we ask our troops to go into harm's way all the time. | ||
| We ask them to go into harm's way. | ||
| And this behind me is a copy of the Soldier's Creed, a copy that usually hangs over my desk here in the Senate. | ||
| And you should be familiar with it. | ||
| It's the same copy that hung over my desk at Walter Reed every single day that I woke up and fought my way back because I wanted to go back and serve next to my buddies who saved my life. | ||
| This same copy, these words, I repeated over and over and over again. | ||
| And let me read out two things to you, two sentences. | ||
| I will always place the mission first, and I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, our troops follow these words every single day, and they man up and they pack their rucksacks and they go to war, and they deserve a leader who can lead them, not a leader who wants to lower the standards for himself or raising the standards for other people. | ||
| And by the way, our troops already meet the standards. | ||
| We ask troops to man that ship, fight that fire, fly that helicopter, and to their very last breath. | ||
| And they do that every single day. | ||
| They cannot be led by someone who's not competent to do the job. | ||
| How can we ask these warriors to train and perform the absolute highest standards when you are asking us to lower the standards to make you the Secretary of Defense simply because you are buddies with our president-elect? | ||
| And by the way, he has filed for bankruptcy six times. | ||
| I'm not quite sure he's the kind of CEO you want to refer to as a successful businessman. | ||
| Let me make it clear. | ||
| You can't seem to grasp that there is no U.S. military as we know it without the incredible women that we serve. | ||
| Women who've earned their place in their units. | ||
| You have not earned your place as Secretary of Defense. | ||
| You say you care about keeping our armed forces strong and that you like that our armed forces meritocracy. | ||
| Then let's not lower the standards for you. | ||
| You, sir, are a no-go at this station. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Duckworth. | ||
| I would like to submit for the record a letter submitted by Mr. Brian Marriott that says anyone who would claim that Pete mismanaged funds at Vets for Freedom is ignorant of the facts. | ||
| Without objection, it will be admitted to the record. | ||
| Senator Budd. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Chairman Wicker, and congrats on your chairmanship of this committee. | |
| I want to thank you for your leadership and your handling of this today. | ||
| I think you're doing a great job. | ||
| So, I want to also submit for the record a letter submitted by Mr. Daniel Catlin, the former operations manager at Vets for Freedom. | ||
| Mr. Catlin's letter states that Mr. Hegseff and Mr. Catlin conducted weekly meetings to meticulously review every dollar that the organization spent. | ||
| Pete's hands-on approach and dedication to financial responsibility ensured that Vets for Freedom operated within its budget. | ||
| Mr. Catlin's letters also states that Pete treated his staff with the utmost respect, regardless of race or gender. | ||
| So I ask unanimous consent to enter this into the record, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Mr. Hegseff, congratulations on your nomination. | ||
| Thanks for appearing before the committee today. | ||
| I enjoy meeting you in my office before Christmas, and I've enjoyed our friendship before that. | ||
| You know, you stated in your advanced policy questions that the American people need to be informed, engaged, and inspired to join our military. | ||
| I wholeheartedly agree with that. | ||
| We also have a problem, though, with obesity and falling academic standards. | ||
| It's very concerning. | ||
| We've talked about that before. | ||
| So if confirmed, how would you approach increasing the number of Americans eligible to serve in the military, but without lowering standards? | ||
| Well, Senator, I think there are already to the credit of, I believe, the Army and other services have now caught up to that, which have piloted programs that have had some success that have allowed young Americans who want to serve in the military but can't necessarily pass the ASFAB or pass the APFT to get into basic training an opportunity to get caught up, a preparatory class. | ||
| Unfortunately, yes, we do have a problem of obesity in our country, not necessarily something that the, if I'm confirmed, Secretary of Defense is able to address. | ||
| But I do think leading from the front matters. | ||
| I do think having a Secretary of Defense that will go out and do PT with the troops matters, that has been out there and done that before. | ||
| And hopefully that's a motivating factor for young people. | ||
| But the reality of obesity and criminal backgrounds and medical problems have long been an issue of recruitment in America, unfortunately. | ||
| What changed is the perception of military service because of the condition of the services and frankly because of, in some ways, the way our schools don't teach young people to love the country anymore. | ||
| And if you don't love the country, why do you want to serve that country? | ||
| That's a deeper problem. | ||
| But all of those things need to be addressed to revive recruiting, and obesity is certainly a part of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for that. | |
| So I've had multiple conversations, young folks back in North Carolina, young men, young women, and we get to meet a lot of them. | ||
| But, you know, I hear from some of these folks who I encourage to join the military. | ||
| They say that they're concerned that it's become politicized. | ||
| And if confirmed, would you commit to working with my office to address the military recruiting crisis and ensuring the military is focused on warfighting? | ||
| Senator, absolutely. | ||
| A number one from day one with a mandate from the Commander-in-Chief who received that mandate when Americans spoke out loudly and said, we want peace through strength, we want America-first foreign policy, and we don't want political ideology driving decisions inside our Defense Department. | ||
| That was clear. | ||
| It's an infection that the American people are acutely aware of, which the men and women in this room have lived firsthand. | ||
| I've lived it firsthand. | ||
| And that's why it will be a priority. | ||
| And I truly believe, and I'm humbled by this, the response we've already seen from young men and women who have decided to join the military when they had said I wasn't going to. | ||
| But seeing a commander-in-chief Donald Trump reassured them. | ||
| Seeing the possibility, if confirmed, of a Secretary of Defense that would have their back reassured them. | ||
| And so in the first couple of months after President Trump's election, we have already seen, the numbers are there, a recruiting surge in all the services that I would welcome the opportunity to continue. | ||
| And it's humbling to think that families across this country would have confidence in us to deliver for their young men and women. | ||
| There's no more important task. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for that. | |
| So shifting gears a bit, I want to hear some of your thoughts on the growing fighter aircraft capacity gap with China and what this means for a potential fight in the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| So if confirmed, what policy recommendations will you make to the President on procurement and maintenance of fourth and fifth generation fighters while we continue to research and develop sixth generation and collaborative combat aircraft? | ||
| Senator, that's a very important conversation, one that I've been looking at a great deal. | ||
| A lot of it, just to be clear, involves classifications and understanding precisely costs and capabilities, including capabilities of enemy systems, both not just fourth and fifth, but potential sixth generation, which we've already seen a prototype released from the Chinese. | ||
| That's a dangerous development considering at least the publicly understood condition of NGAD, which I look forward to the opportunity to look underneath the hood on that. | ||
|
Senator Rosen's Priorities
00:03:07
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| But ensuring 4th and 5th are capable and upgraded as necessary will be a part of our contingency. | ||
| But when you look at what's happening in the Indo-Pacific, say operability, range is going to matter because it's such a large battle space, that will all factor in decisions that are made. | ||
| And that's where I feel, frankly, a little bit liberated, that I didn't work at Lockheed or any number of pick a defense contractor. | ||
| I didn't mean to point one out in particular. | ||
| Pick any. | ||
| I haven't. | ||
| I don't have a special interest in any particular system or any particular company or any particular narrative. | ||
| I want to know what works. | ||
| I want to know what defeats our enemies. | ||
| What keeps us safe? | ||
| What deters them? | ||
| What keeps our enemies up at night? | ||
| Whatever that is, I want more of it. | ||
| And I want to invest in it. | ||
| And I know that's the view that President Trump has as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| You know, some have commented recently about the need to eliminate immediately a manned aircraft. | ||
| So I'd say maybe one day, but that day is not now and certainly not before 2027, especially in the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| So if confirmed, will you commit to work with my office and this committee to ensure the proper mix of fighters, manned and unmanned? | ||
| I look forward to working with you on that, Senator, because unmanned will be a very important part of the way future wars are fought. | ||
| Just the idea of survivability for a human being drives cost and time in ways that unmanned systems do not. | ||
| But I look forward to that conversation. | ||
| Senator. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Budd. | ||
| I now recognize Senator Reed for a unanimous consent request. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that two letters be submitted for the record. | ||
| One letter signed by numerous organizations, including the Government Accountability Project, the other signed by several organizations, including the Truman National Security Project. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
| Now, Senator Kelly, Senator Rosen got here after the gavel went down. | ||
| Do you really want to go ahead of her? | ||
| I am going to defer to my good friend and colleague, Senator Rosen. | ||
| That is a really great state of Nevada. | ||
| That's a really good decision. | ||
| Senator Rosen, you are recognized. | ||
| And thank you, Senator Kelly. | ||
| I owe you one thank you, Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Reid, for holding this hearing. | ||
| And Mr. Hagseth, I appreciate your service and your willingness to serve again. | ||
| However, I am deeply disappointed that you would not agree to meet with me, as other members have said on this committee prior to this hearing, as is the precedent for this committee and others. | ||
| So let me tell you a little bit about what I would have talked about had you made yourself available prior to the hearing. | ||
| Nevada is home to the premier aviation training ranges for both the Air Force and the Navy, the largest ammunition depot in the world, and the only place in the country where we are able to verify the reliability of our nuclear stockpile without the need for explosive testing. | ||
|
Belief in Earned Veterans' Benefits
00:04:30
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| The Nevada National Guard is one of the only few units across the country with the mission of fighting wildfires. | ||
| That's for another hearing. | ||
| And currently activated to fight the devastating fires around Los Angeles in support of our neighbors. | ||
| We therefore play a critical role in our national security, and the person who holds the position of Secretary of Defense matters greatly to Nevada service members and our military equities. | ||
| But every single person who serves in the military, we've talked about my colleagues, esteemed colleagues who have talked about recruitment and retention. | ||
| One day they will become a veteran. | ||
| So my veterans and the folks who are serving active duty now are concerned about what you think. | ||
| DOD does not have jurisdiction over Nevada's 200,000-plus veterans, but I am interested in your views about the service members once they've transitioned out of the military, given the influence you would have while they're in service if confirmed. | ||
| In 2019, on a segment of Fox and Friends, you said that veteran service organizations, VSOs, I'm going to quote, encourage veterans to apply for every government benefit they can ever get after they leave the service. | ||
| You stated you don't want to, quote, be dependent on government assistance from the VA based on injuries or illnesses that might have arisen from your military service. | ||
| So I'm just going to ask you a few yes or no questions about veterans, understanding you don't have jurisdiction, but this is important to our morale, is important to our recruitment, and is important to our retention, and it is important to how we respect others in this country. | ||
| So, yes or no, please. | ||
| Do you believe that VSOs are wrong to support veterans in obtaining the benefits that they have rightfully earned and deserved when they sign that line like you did for your service? | ||
| Senator Veterans deserve the benefits they've earned. | ||
| I have been in many battles with traditional veterans. | ||
| So you would agree with conversations over differences of opinion about how to deliver those services. | ||
| So yes or no? | ||
| Do you believe VSOs are wrong? | ||
| VSOs is a very broad term. | ||
| We were a VSO also, ma'am. | ||
| But some of those services took a traditional. | ||
| Should they be able to help the veterans obtain the benefits that they have earned? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Should anyone be able to help? | ||
| Every veteran should have rapid access to all of these. | ||
| Do you believe that veterans should be ashamed for having sought and obtained the benefits that they have earned? | ||
| Do you think veterans should be ashamed to seek out benefits? | ||
| Senator, I think we should be ashamed as a nation of the amount of veterans that commit suicide because they hit a brick wall. | ||
| They commit suicide because they have a question. | ||
| I'm going to move on. | ||
| I'm going to take that as a result. | ||
| How about veterans who suffer lasting injuries or illnesses due to their military service? | ||
| Do you think they deserve our support and assistance? | ||
| I mean, your answers to these, they're too broad. | ||
| People want to know, are you willing to support our veterans' organizations that will help our veterans get every damn thing that they deserve because they signed on the dotted line to keep us safe, just like you did? | ||
| I respect that. | ||
| Will you? | ||
| Senator, with all due humility, I don't know that there's anyone in this room over the last 20 years that have worked harder to ensure that our veterans are taken care of. | ||
| It has been a passion of my life alongside with so many on this dais to make sure that veterans receive and it is a recruiting crisis. | ||
| They don't want to be a very important part of the state. | ||
| You said veterans are dependent on the government. | ||
| Do you believe that veterans getting these benefits are dependent on the government? | ||
| Or do you believe it's a benefit they've earned and deserved through their service? | ||
| It's a benefit they've earned and a hand up to the government. | ||
| But these are your words then. | ||
| So you have again changed your position. | ||
| Where you believe the veterans are dependent, now you believe they've earned and deserved it. | ||
| I just think it's disrespectful to change that position. | ||
| These are benefits that people may need throughout their life and may not know when they need them or how they're going to need them. | ||
| And they need to be there when they do. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm going to move on to my next question. | ||
| America's role in the world. | ||
| Our alliances, the threats America is facing, they're serious, they're wide-ranging, from China to Russia, terrani-in-backed terrorism. | ||
| So do you agree with the national defense strategy that the U.S. cannot compete with China, Russia, and their partners alone and certainly cannot win a war that way? | ||
|
Choosing America's Path
00:02:52
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| And this is a quote from the National Defense Strategy. | ||
| Is your interpretation that American first foreign policy is America alone? | ||
| Does that include abandoning our allies and partners such as NATO, Taiwan, Israel, and others? | ||
| And if we can't win alone and we don't strengthen our strategic partnerships, I would say that position, your position, places on a strategic path to lose to our adversaries. | ||
| So maybe you're okay with choosing that path for America. | ||
| I want to know how you square that position with the positions you articulated in your book, where you wrote that NATO is at relic, at best a distraction, and should be scrapped and remade. | ||
| Are you okay with sending us down a path where we can't win? | ||
| Senator, the world has had, our friends in the world have had no better ally. | ||
| Our allies and partners have had no better friend than President Donald Trump, who's reinaugurated a NATO alliance. | ||
| Donald Trump is real in every way, in ways this administration has not. | ||
| He has ensured that the NATO alliance has become far more robust. | ||
| He works. | ||
| Donald Trump is going to stand behind Ukraine. | ||
| Is Donald Trump going to stand behind Ukraine? | ||
| Are you going to stand behind Ukraine? | ||
| You say he's the strongest president. | ||
| President-elect Trump said he will end the war in Ukraine before he takes office. | ||
| Okay, so less than a week before he's inaugurated, to the best of your knowledge. | ||
| Do you have knowledge of a plan that he's going to use to rapidly end the war with Ukraine? | ||
| Do you believe it's feasible that it does not make unacceptable concessions to Vladimir Putin, who is a brutal dictator? | ||
| And are you going to give President-elect Trump the military advice that you have given others to achieve the objective of us winning the war in Ukraine? | ||
| How do you think a rapid end to the war that Vladimir Putin started will affect the United States standing across the world? | ||
| Senator, I will always give clear guidance, my clear guidance, best guidance to the President of the United States on matters like that. | ||
| Do you think that if we concede to Vladimir Putin that that will hurt our credibility with our allies and partners? | ||
| And do you not believe that our adversaries are watching? | ||
| Perhaps you can take that for the record, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| Senator Schmidt. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'd like to submit for the record a letter submitted by Mr. Christopher Ahn, the former Director of Operations for Vets for Freedom. | ||
| Mr. Ahn, his letter states that the suggestion, quote, the suggestion that funds were misused for personal gain, lavish parties, or other improper purposes is categorically false. | ||
| Throughout my time working with Pete Hegseth, he consistently demonstrated exceptional integrity and leadership. | ||
|
Why Equity Hurts Recruiting
00:05:44
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| I asked unanimous consent to enter this letter into the record. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
| Senator Schmidt. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, good to see you here today. | ||
| Thank you for your service and your willingness to serve. | ||
| I also want to thank you for your clarity in articulating the vision you have for the Department of Defense in restoring an ethos, a warrior ethos, which is in stark contrast to the ethos we've seen the last four years, which is of weakness and wokeness. | ||
| And I want to drill down on a few things specifically and exactly how we've gotten to where we've gotten with recruiting and morale. | ||
| DEI. | ||
| There's been a little bit of discussion about this, but for those watching at home, DEI is not about giving everybody opportunity. | ||
| It is rooted in cultural Marxism. | ||
| The idea that you pit the room, any room, with oppressor versus oppressed. | ||
| It's race essentialism, and it is poison. | ||
| It has no business whatsoever in our military. | ||
| I think the American people have spoken loudly and clearly about this. | ||
| They're tired of this. | ||
| They're tired of woke ideology. | ||
| And to my Democrat colleagues on the other side, if you haven't picked up on that, you missed the plot. | ||
| Because that's what November 5th partially was about. | ||
| And so let's talk specifically about some of these DEI programs that have been funded. | ||
| In our academy, specifically the Air Force Academy, it was advised as disfavored language to refer to your mom and dad as mom and dad. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Dear mom and dad, I'm writing home. | ||
| Don't say that. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| We're all just people. | ||
| You can't say that either. | ||
| And in an effort to police this, in a 1984 Orwellian novel, there was actually an eyes and ears program to rat on your fellow students who might say mom and dad or just say in a tough situation, you know what, we're all just people. | ||
| Can't say that. | ||
| This wasn't limited, by the way, to our academies. | ||
| The Secretary of the Air Force, our current Secretary of the Air Force, in a memo from August of 2022, thought we had too many white officers, advocated for quotas. | ||
| And if you crunch the numbers, that meant that 5,800 white officers who've worked really hard should be fired. | ||
| In the United States of America, I don't know how we got here. | ||
| And by the way, the Air Force isn't alone here. | ||
| The Navy sort of touted a drag queen influencer. | ||
| This stuff is insane. | ||
| And people wonder why recruiting has dropped off. | ||
| And let me just go through a few numbers, and I want to get your comments on how we fixed this, because it's gone completely off the rails. | ||
| In 2022, the Army missed their recruiting goal of 60,000 soldiers by over 15,000. | ||
| In 2023, the Navy missed their recruiting goals by over 7,000. | ||
| In 2022, the Air Force couldn't meet their standards, their numbers, even though they lowered their standards. | ||
| They've lowered their standards to meet numbers they still can't get to. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, we got to fix this. | ||
| I think what you've demonstrated today is that you have the talent and the ability and the desire to fix it. | ||
| How are you going to fix it? | ||
| Well, Senator, thank you for the question. | ||
| First and foremost, up front, you have to tear out DEI and CRT initiatives root and branch out of institutions. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And then you have to put in Army, Navy, and Air Force secretaries and others, civilian positions at the helm who are committed to the same priorities that the President of the United States is. | ||
| And if confirmed, the Secretary of Defense will be. | ||
| Send a clear message that this is not a time for equity. | ||
| Equity is a very different word than equality. | ||
| Equality is the bedrock of our military. | ||
| Men and women, duty positions in uniform, black, white, doesn't matter. | ||
| We treat you equally based on who you are in the image of God as an individual. | ||
| And we all get the same bad haircuts. | ||
| You're not an individual. | ||
| You're part of a group. | ||
| Equity prescribes some sort of an outcome based on differing attributes that we have that divide us. | ||
| What skin color are you? | ||
| What gender are you? | ||
| And then infuse that into institutions which manifest in things like quotas, formal or informal, which does what to morale? | ||
| Sends it in the tubes. | ||
| And it makes people feel like they're being judged by something other than how good they are at their job, which is poisonous inside institutions. | ||
| So on top of this recruiting crisis, that wasn't enough for this administration. | ||
| During the COVID hysteria and in their attempt to fire 100,000 people who worked for bigger companies because they didn't get the COVID shot or to mask five-year-olds, they decided also to make this a central plank in their policy at the Pentagon. | ||
| 8,000 well-trained, so we got a recruiting crisis. | ||
| 8,000 well-trained men and women were fired. | ||
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Commitment to Reinstatement
00:03:30
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| Were fired. | ||
| Will you commit today, Mr. Hegseth, to recruit these folks back, to give them back pay, and give them an apology from the United States government for how they were disrespected? | ||
| Senator, I will commit to this because the Commander-in-Chief has committed to this, that not only will they be reinstated, they will receive an apology, back pay, and rank that they lost because they were forced out due to an experimental vaccine. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I'm a limited time, but I just want to say, for all the talk of experience and not coming from the same cocktail parties that permanent Washington is used to, you are a breath of fresh air. | ||
| And again, if you weren't paying attention to what this election was all about, it was about the disruptors versus the establishment. | ||
| And the American people have had enough of business as usual for the same people that we line up for these same jobs who give us the same results. | ||
| We need somebody who's going to go in there and fight for innovation, fight for change. | ||
| I think you're that person, and I appreciate your willingness to sit here and listen to some of these undignified attacks. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Captain Mark Kelly, you're recognized. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Congratulations on your chairmanship. | ||
| I want to make a request to the committee that we have a second round of questions. | ||
| Pursuant to the bipartisan staff agreement that we reached late last year, this will be one round of seven-minute questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'll be happy to recognize my colleague, Mr. Reed. | ||
| I think it's important to note for the record that when Secretary Hagel was here, we had three rounds of questioning. | ||
| When Secretary Carter was here, we had two rounds of questioning. | ||
| And I cannot recall any time where I have denied, as a chairman, a member to ask for a second round and receive the second round. | ||
| So we are, I think, violating the principles of the committee, and I just want to go on the record. | ||
| And your comment is noted. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, thank you for being here today. | ||
| Thank you for your service to this country. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Few nominees come into this room with all the necessary experience to do this job, to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| We get that. | ||
| It's a reflection on just how big of a job this is. | ||
| What I want to understand is whether or not you bring any of the necessary experience that this job requires. | ||
| And here's where I'm concerned. | ||
| Senator Coleman, introducing you, and this is a quote, he said, he has struggled and overcome great personal challenges, unquote. | ||
| You walk in here saying that you've had personal and character issues in your past, including heavy drinking, which you wrote about. | ||
| And you said, and this is a quote from you, that you said, I sit before you as an open book. | ||
|
Anonymous Smears Revealed
00:06:37
|
||
| Yet you haven't actually said what personal challenges it is that you've overcome when you've been asked about them. | ||
| So I'm going to give you an opportunity here to be as forthright as you say you want to be. | ||
| So while leading concerned veterans of America, there were very specific cases cited by individuals about your conduct. | ||
| I'm going to go through a few of them, and I just want you to tell me if these are true or false. | ||
| Very simple. | ||
| On Memorial Day 2014, at a CVA event in Virginia, you needed to be carried out of the event for being intoxicated. | ||
| Senator Anonymous. | ||
| True smears. | ||
| Just true or false? | ||
| Very simple. | ||
| Summer of 2014 in Cleveland, drunk in public with the CVA team. | ||
| Anonymous smears. | ||
| I'm just asking for true or false answers. | ||
| An event in North Carolina, drunk in front of three young female staff members after you had instituted a no-alcohol policy and then reversed it. | ||
| True or false? | ||
| Anonymous smears. | ||
| December of 2014, at the CVA Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt at Washington, D.C., you were noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to your room. | ||
| Is that true or false? | ||
| Anonymous smears. | ||
| Another time, a CVA staffer stated that you passed out in the back of a party bus. | ||
| Is that true or false? | ||
| Anonymous smears. | ||
| In 2014, while in Louisiana on official business for CVA, did you take your staff, including young female staff members, to a strip club? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| Anonymous smears. | ||
| So is it accurate that the organization reached a financial settlement with a female staffer who claimed to be at a strip club with you, and there was a colleague who attempted to sexually assault her? | ||
| Was there a financial settlement? | ||
| Senator, I was not involved in that. | ||
| I don't know the nature of how that played out. | ||
| But you understand there was a financial settlement for a young female staffer who accused another member of the organization, not you, of sexual assault in a strip club. | ||
| We have multiple statements on the record referring to that. | ||
| But you claim you were not there when that occurred. | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| Now, the behavior I cited, if true, do you think that this behavior of intoxication, going into these type of establishments, women on your staff being so uncomfortable that they have to file these sort of harassment claims, do you think this is appropriate behavior for a leader? | ||
| Senator, the overwhelming majority of anyone who has worked for me, including the on-the-record statements that have been submitted with their name on it on the record, men and women who worked with me every day are the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that testify to my leadership and professionalism in leading Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. | ||
| My leadership has been completely impugned on these veterans organizations that did fantastic work. | ||
| Mr. Hecksteth, I'm not even going to go into the accusations. | ||
| I'm going to manage our financial books with integrity across the board. | ||
| How many people, everybody who runs the campaign? | ||
| I have limited time. | ||
| I'm not going to get into the accusations that come from Fox News. | ||
| I know you have some of your Fox News colleagues here. | ||
| There are multiple instances of accusations against you about drinking on the job. | ||
| All anonymous, all false, all refuted by my colleagues who have I worked with for 10 years at 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. and everything. | ||
| The challenge here for me, Mr. Heckstett. Is when there is discussion about personal challenges and you admittedly had issues with heavy drinking. | ||
| It's hard to kind of square this, to square the circle here. | ||
| It's kind of a difficult thing to do. | ||
| Let me ask you if I have about 90 seconds left here. | ||
| If you had to answer these questions about sexual assault against you and your drinking and your personal conduct, would it have been different if you were under oath? | ||
| Senator, all I'm pointing out is the false claims against me. | ||
| Okay, I take it you do not want to answer that question. | ||
| I walked into this hearing this morning concerned that you haven't demonstrated adequate leadership in your civilian roles. | ||
| And this is a dangerous world we're living in here. | ||
| And America cannot afford a Secretary of Defense who is unprepared for that mission. | ||
| I'm going to leave with concerns about your transparency. | ||
| You say you've had personal issues in your past, yet when asked about those very issues, you blame an anonymous smear campaign, even when many of these claims are not anonymous. | ||
| Which is it? | ||
| Have you overcome personal issues or are you the target of a smear campaign? | ||
| It can't be both. | ||
| It's clear to me that you're not being honest with us or the American people because you know the truth would disqualify you from getting the job. | ||
| And just as concerning as each of these specific disqualifying accusations are, what concerns me just as much is the idea of having a Secretary of Defense who is not transparent. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I yield back my two seconds. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Kelly. | ||
| I would at this point ask unanimous consent to introduce into the record letters by Tina Kingston, Louisiana State Director of Concerned Veterans for America, and Holly Talley, Louisiana local director of Concerned Veterans for America, attesting to the appropriateness of Mr. Hex's conduct with regard to female staffers. | ||
|
Potential Military Duties Questioned
00:15:54
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| Without objection, that is added to the record. | ||
| And Senator Banks, you are now recognized. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Welcome, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| You have conducted yourself very well today. | ||
| In fact, so well that I believe it's incumbent upon this committee to confirm you, ASAP, to get you on the job, to clean up the mess that we have at the Pentagon ongoing at this moment because of the leadership there over the last four years has failed us. | ||
| In President Biden's first year in office, the Department of Defense spent over 5 million man hours on quote-unquote counter extremism and diversity training, what you and I might call woke training or DEI. | ||
| The administration has refused to provide us any more recent data than that first year, but we know that it's exponentially more man hours wasted on DEI over the last four years. | ||
| And I wonder, what do you make of that? | ||
| What could those 5 million man hours in that first year of Secretary Austin and President Biden's administration, what could those 5 million man hours have been used for? | ||
| Senator, that's a lot of service members sitting in a lot of briefs, hearing about a lot of threats or political perspectives that might be dangerous that do not comport to threats that actually exist inside the force or ideas that introduce critical race theory or DEI or climate change initiatives that they and their commands have to conform to. | ||
| And every time one of those happens, it gets pushed down the chain of command. | ||
| That also includes new layers of leadership that have been created under this administration committed to enforcing those types of DEI and CRT initiatives. | ||
| So we hear 5 million man hours, and that sounds like a lot. | ||
| The more troubling aspect is how many training hours that takes away from a company commander or battalion commander or a wing commander who's out there trying to maintain their force, which is already constrained because of what the Biden administration has done to the defense budget and defense capabilities. | ||
| So they're having to choose between the political prerogatives of the civilians who are demanding more DEI and CRT and gender quotas and the readiness of their forces. | ||
| And I believe this Pentagon is prepared, because of our commander-in-chief, for a Secretary of Defense, should I be confirmed, that focuses, laser focuses on these issues, and they're ready to respond. | ||
| They want to pack their rucksacks and go train because they understand we live in a dangerous world. | ||
| I think that's an important point, a key point, because months later, while the priority of the Biden-Austin-led Pentagon was on DEI and woke training, One of the biggest embarrassments in American history happened when we lost 13 of our heroes in the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. | ||
| Secretary Austin testified before the House Armed Services Committee a couple of years ago and responding to a question from me said he had, quote, no regrets about what happened in Afghanistan. | ||
| I wonder what do you make of that? | ||
| Senator, it's shameful. | ||
| They still tout it as the most successful airlift in American history when what the rest of us all saw was true laid before our eyes. | ||
| Utter failure, a destruction of a military legacy there, abandonment of our allies, death of American troops, detriment to our reputation, and then no answers and no accountability on the other side. | ||
| And then what was unleashed because of what happened in Afghanistan? | ||
| The October 7th attacks, an invasion into Ukraine, the world recognized weakness for what it was, and who bore the brunt for it? | ||
| The troops on the front lines at Abbey Gate doing an impossible job whose external security was the Taliban? | ||
| Because there was no actual plan for this under the Biden administration. | ||
| And yet, not a single person, the only person held accountable in those moments was a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel who had the courage to stand up and say someone should be held accountable for that. | ||
| His name is Stu Scheller. | ||
| No one else involved has ever taken accountability for it. | ||
| When that microcosm becomes the reality of the perception of the American military or America's commitment to victory and success and positive outcomes, the world responds to that. | ||
| President Trump is going to restore real deterrence by bringing a real warrior culture back, rebuilding our military, and ending wars properly. | ||
| And if we have to fight them, winning them decisively. | ||
| I served in Afghanistan, you served in Afghanistan. | ||
| 75% of our nation's veterans disagree with how the withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled, the embarrassment of it, what that's done, I believe, has directly impacted our historic recruitment crisis in this country, without a doubt. | ||
| And you've already talked about that, but how do we fix it? | ||
| How do we bring pride back to wearing the uniform for the next generation to inspire them to do what you and I did to raise our right hand and take that oath and serve this great country? | ||
| I really do think it comes back to strong, clear leadership, patriotic pro-American leadership that says we're not going to focus on all the other political prerogatives. | ||
| That's why we all have political perspectives. | ||
| I said this before and I'll say it again. | ||
| In uniform, none of that matters. | ||
| You wear green, you wear blue, you bleed red. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Who you vote for doesn't matter. | ||
| But when the perception of that changes, then you don't want people deciding whether to serve based on a political party in power. | ||
| That's a dangerous thing for continuity inside your military. | ||
| And it's fragile right now. | ||
| President Trump, and if I'm confirmed with my leadership, we're going to restore the continuity of an apolitical military that acts decisively and only based on merit. | ||
| You and I. | ||
| They sound basic, but they're fundamental. | ||
| You and I agree that wokeness is weakness. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth, do you support racial quotas in recruitment or promotions in the United States military? | ||
| Senator, I do not support any form of racial quota. | ||
| Do you support affirmative action in our nation's military academies? | ||
| Senator, I only support hiring and promoting and admitting the best and brightest, whatever their background is. | ||
| I think that's very important. | ||
| Mr. Heggs said, Lloyd Austin, the secretary, later went AWOL. | ||
| He disappeared for days and never told the president, didn't even inform the president's chief of staff that he was going into the hospital. | ||
| Would that ever occur on your watch? | ||
| No, Senator. | ||
| I know in any one of my jobs, if I had decided to go AWOL for even a day or two in uniform or around that, that would have been a concern. | ||
| I believe accountability matters. | ||
| No one to this day has ever, as you've said, been held accountable for what happened in Afghanistan. | ||
| It was embarrassing to this country. | ||
| It's impacted this country greatly. | ||
| And I applaud you and President Trump for bringing accountability back to our Pentagon. | ||
| With that, I yield back. | ||
| Chair recognizes the distinguished ranking member for unanimous consent request. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit an article discussing some of the issues of readiness and DEI. | ||
| There has been a comment that 5.9 million man hours have been used for DEI. | ||
| General My clarified that that is an estimate out of more than 2 million man hours that the Department of Defense invested during the time period. | ||
| is this published sir this is published by megan myers and i will get the okay Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's not military. | |
| Military.com. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Without objection, it will be admitted to the record. | ||
| And Senator Slotkin. | ||
| Welcome to the committee to a recognition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Senator, and thank you for referencing the great Carl Levin as you introduced me. | |
| We miss him in Michigan. | ||
| For those who I haven't met in my one week that I've been sworn into the Senate, I'm a CIA officer recruited after 9-11. | ||
| I did three tours armed in Iraq alongside the military and have worked for four different secretaries of defense, both Democrat and Republican, proudly, and watched them make decisions that literally determine the life and death of Americans in the dark of night. | ||
| I'm also a Democrat representing a state that Trump won, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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We both won on the same ballot. | |
| So I understand that President Trump has the right to nominate his people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are going to have policies that we disagree with. | |
| All of that, to me, comes very standard. | ||
| What I think I'm most concerned with is that no president has the right to use the uniformed military in a way that violates the U.S. Constitution and further taints the military as that apolitical institution that we all want, right? | ||
| And our founders designed the system so that we had posse comitatus, that we weren't going to use active duty military inside the United States and make American citizens potentially scared of their own military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We went through our own experience with that with the British. | |
| As the Secretary of Defense, you will be the one man standing in the breach should President Trump give an illegal order, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not saying he will, but if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. | |
| Do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the Commander-in-Chief that would violate the U.S. Constitution? | ||
| Senator, thank you for your service. | ||
| But I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders. | ||
| No, I'm not saying he will, but do you believe there is such a thing as an illegal order that Joe Biden or any other president, Donald Trump could give, is there anything that a commander-in-chief could ask you to do with the uniformed military that would be in violation of the U.S. Constitution? | ||
| Senator, anybody of any party could give an order that is against the Constitution or against the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Okay, so and are you so are you saying that you would stand in the breach and push back if you were given an illegal order? | ||
| I start by saying I reject the premise that President at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mike, this isn't a hypothetical, okay? | |
| Your predecessor in a Trump administration, Secretary Esper, was asked and did use uniformed military to clear unarmed protesters. | ||
| He was given the order to potentially shoot at them. | ||
| Hilos flew low in Washington, D.C. as crowd control. | ||
|
unidentified
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He later apologized publicly for those actions. | |
| Was he right or wrong to apologize? | ||
| Senator, I was there on the ground. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw that. | |
| I saw that the Secretary of Defense was involved in that moment. | ||
| I also was he right to legality and the Constitution. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was he right or wrong to apologize? | |
| I'm not going to put words in the mouth of Secretary Esper or anybody else. | ||
|
unidentified
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He said them himself, you don't have to. | |
| What are you scared of? | ||
| Did he do the right thing by apologizing? | ||
| I'm not scared of anything, Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
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And say yes or no. | |
| You can say no. | ||
| The laws and the Constitution in any particular Donald Trump asked for the active duty 82nd Airborne to be deployed during that same time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Secretary Esper has written that he convinced him against that decision. | |
| If Donald Trump asked you to use the 82nd Airborne in law enforcement roles in Washington, D.C., would you also convince him otherwise? | ||
| I'm not going to get ahead of conversations I would have with the President. | ||
| However, there are laws and processes inside our Constitution that would be foul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Follow. | |
| President Trump said in November that he is willing to consider using the active duty military against the, quote, enemy within. | ||
| Have you been personally involved in discussions of using the U.S. military active duty inside the United States? | ||
| Senator, I'm fine. | ||
| I'm glad we finally got to the topic of border security equaling national security because it's been abdicated and ignored for the last four years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That wasn't my question. | |
| I'm just asking, have you been involved? | ||
| You're about to be the Secretary of Defense potentially. | ||
| Have you been involved in discussions about using the active duty military inside the United States? | ||
| Senator, I am not yet the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| If confirmed, I would be party to any number of people. | ||
| Which I would not reveal what I have discussed with the President in this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, just have you been in conversations? | |
| Again, you're going to be in charge of 3 million people, the active duty that I know you care about. | ||
|
unidentified
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I believe you care about. | |
| So have you been in conversations about using the active duty in any way, whether it's setting up in detention camps, policing dangerous cities? | ||
|
unidentified
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Have you been involved in any of those conversations? | |
| Certainly, I have been involved in conversations relating to doing things this administration has not, which is secure the southern border and not allow floods of illegal countries through an invasion that threatens the American people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, okay. | |
| And there are ways in which the military is already playing a role in that, to include 5,000 national guards. | ||
| We do believe that the U.S. is planning to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And active duty military members, detention centers. | |
| Our U.S. military is not trained in law enforcement roles. | ||
| I think you know that, right? | ||
| We've seen how that mission is difficult for them in places like Iraq and Afghanistan because that's not the training a uniformed military comes with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you support the use of active duty military in supporting detention camps? | |
| Senator, everything we will do would be lawful and under the Constitution, but I recognize that this administration has abdicated its responsibility. | ||
| President Trump is going to restore order preserving the enemies from invading Indian. | ||
| And yes, he is saying that. | ||
| Sir, in the spirit of preserving the institution that I think we both care about legitimately, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've heard a couple of different things. | |
| One, you said you will not change the uniform code of military justice, which is what governs the justice system in the military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes or no? | |
| You said that earlier. | ||
| Those are laws, senators, set by Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so you will not go to change it. | |
| You will not attempt to change it. | ||
| You also said that JAG officers are potentially people who put their own interests in their own medals and promotions ahead of the troops. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Lindsey Graham was a JAG officer for most of his life. | |
| Is that what you believe about those who implement our justice system in the U.S. military? | ||
| Senator, I was speaking about particular JAG officers I've had to deal with in my military side. | ||
| Are you, as Secretary of Defense, going to get involved in the implementation of the U.S. Military Code of Justice? | ||
| Senator, ultimately, it will be a big part of my job to evaluate decisions vis-a-vis the Uniform Code of Military Justice. | ||
|
unidentified
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Have you seen the C.Q. Brown on your list in the warrior boards to be removed from his position? | |
| Senator, every single senior officer will be reviewed based on meritocracy, standards, and lethality, and commitment to lawful orders they will be given. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Slotkin. | ||
| I now recognize Senator Shaheen for a unanimous consent request. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I have a request from a former general who served 35 years, Dennis Lach, who most recently was commander of the 94th Regional Readiness Command at Fort Devons, Mass, who has asked that his letter opposing Mr. Hegseth's nomination be entered into the record. | ||
|
Letters and Op-Eds Support
00:03:50
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| Is there objection? | ||
| Without objection, it will be entered. | ||
| Also, I present a host of letters and op-eds from former co-workers at Vets for Freedom and Concerned Vets for America, as well as Fox News Channel. | ||
| I also have letters and op-eds from many veterans and Iraqis and Afghanis who were helped by Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent to introduce these letters and op-eds. | ||
| Without objection, it is so ordered. | ||
| Senator Sheehee, you've been very patient. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Entering a support letter in for Mr. Hegseth, submitted by nearly 90 former soldiers who served with Pete in combat. | ||
| I would like to submit a statement from 86 of them who support his nomination. | ||
| Although they come from different units and ranks, the signatories commend Mr. Hegseth for his selfless leadership, love of his soldiers, and commitment to our country. | ||
| Two items. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry, one item. | |
| I ask unanimous consent down to this. | ||
| Without objection, it will be entered. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Pete, I'm actually going to ask you questions because I want to hear your answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How many genders are there? | |
| Tough one. | ||
| Senator, there are two genders. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know that well. | |
| I'm a Sheehi, so I'm on board. | ||
| What is the diameter of the rifle round fired out of an M4A1 rifle? | ||
| That's a 556. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How many push-ups can you do? | |
| I did five sets of 47 this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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What do you think our most important strategic base is in the Pacific? | |
| In the Pacific, Guam is pretty strategically significant. | ||
|
unidentified
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How many rounds of 556 can you fit into the magazine of an M4 rifle? | |
| Depends on the magazine, but standard issue is 30, Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
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And what size round is the M9 Beretta standard issue sidearm for the military fire? | |
| A 9mm, Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What kind of batteries do you put in your night vision goggle? | |
| Duracel. | ||
| So right there, you're representing qualifications that show you understand what the warfighter deals with every single day on the battlefield. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You understand what happens on the front line where our troops will be. | |
| And what happens, unfortunately, in this country is decisions made in rooms like this, bad decisions, end up in dead 17, 18, 19-year-old Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And those Americans rarely come from families that sit in rooms like this. | |
| They come from lower, middle-income families. | ||
| who sometimes the military is their only way out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they joined because maybe they want to go to college. | |
| Maybe they know the choice. | ||
| Maybe they love this country. | ||
| But for whatever reason, they joined and they saw it on the dotted line. | ||
| And when people like us screw up, they don't come home. | ||
| And that's the one thing that I care about. | ||
| As you remember when I shut the door when you came with your entourage, Senator Coleman, I've known for a long time. | ||
| And you and I sat together, asked you one question. | ||
| You remember what that question was? | ||
| Are you going to have the backs of the warfighters? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| What is going to be your number one priority? | ||
|
Adversaries' Shipbuilding Dominance
00:03:15
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| And I don't care, frankly, what all these letters and articles say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been a part of a smear campaign too. | |
| I get it. | ||
| I care that you're going to have one thing in mind when you sit in that chair in that five-sided building. | ||
| And you told me what that was. | ||
| So with that, you have my support. | ||
| I'm sorry you have to go through a process like this, but it is one of the most important jobs in the world. | ||
| We've got to make sure you're ready for it. | ||
| I thank you for your answers. | ||
| I got one final question that's very important to me. | ||
| This is more of a technical question, but I think it's to fix the Army in this country is a one or two year problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can make bullets, we can make rifles. | |
| Fix the airports might be a five-year problem. | ||
| To fix our Navy is a decades-long pursuit. | ||
| How are you going to fix our national, you don't have all the power, we're not, we're not China, unfortunately, can't snap your fingers, but how are you going to lead an initiative with the DOD to reinvigorate our national shipbuilding industry so we are able to compete with China because freedom of navigation is critical to our economy and the global economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to be a very important task for you to complete. | |
| It's a critical question, Senator, and that's why I'm grateful that President Trump has said definitively to me and publicly that shipbuilding will be one of his absolute top priorities of this administration. | ||
| So a lot of it does go into pulling things up into the OSD's office, Secretary of Defense's office, to shine a spotlight on it to make sure the bureaucracy doesn't strangle important initiatives that need to happen. | ||
| We need to reinvigorate our defense industrial base in this country to include our shipbuilding capacity. | ||
| Some of it is on the east, some of it's on the west, some of it's on the Great Lakes. | ||
| The workforce problems that our shipyards are facing are significant, and there's been a big investment from this committee, I know, in a lot of those places because of the shortfalls, manpower issues, everything else. | ||
| But we also see adversaries that have been able to innovate themselves in ways that their shipbuilding capacity is, I won't reveal it at this hearing, multitudes and multitudes beyond our capabilities. | ||
| So it needs to be a rapid investment, a rapid fielding, and then we need to incentivize outside entities to fill the gap. | ||
| We talk a lot about UAVs. | ||
| UAVs are very important, but there's also a future of UUVs, unmanned underwater vehicles, that will be a part of amplifying the impact of our Navy because this administration has allowed our number of ships to drop below 300. | ||
| It sets a projection of 340 or 350, but doesn't create the capacity to actually address it. | ||
| And so if we're going to defend our interests, our allies, and put America first, we're going to have to be able to project power. | ||
| That means shipbuilding. | ||
| It means historic investments in our defense industrial base there. | ||
| And then also driving innovation and cost savings in ways that only business leaders inside the Pentagon can do. | ||
| When I'd add, I don't think any board in the world would have hired Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg when they founded their companies either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this country was founded by young people who had a great vision. | |
| Thank you for being willing to serve your country again. | ||
| And thanks for coming here today. | ||
| I yield back, Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Sheehy. | ||
| You yield back the balance of your time. | ||