In some ways, the secretary of Defense nomination of Pete Hegseth was always meant as a domination exercise, a way of making Senate Republicans humiliate themselves for Donald Trump’s approval.
Hegseth has white supremacist tattoos and what is reportedly a pretty severe drinking problem: one friend told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that they once saw him order three gin and tonics at a breakfast meeting. In 2017, a woman went to the emergency room – and then the police – after what she said was a rape by Hegseth; he later paid a settlement and had her sign a nondisclosure agreement. (Hegseth claims the encounter, which took place while he was married to his second wife and had just had a child with the woman who would become his third, was consensual and denies all wrongdoing.) He wrote a book, The War on Warriors, which seems to consist mainly of his gripes about the presence of women in combat roles and his objections to the fact that American service members are required by abide by the Geneva conventions.
