Controversial Cabinet and Agency Picks—Part Seven

Victor Davis Hanson

Pete Hegseth/Secretary of Defense

Hegseth is/was also the target of sexual harassment/assault accusations first launched seven years ago.

But here too there are critical details left out by the Left. Sexual crime investigators of the Monterey Police Department in ultra-liberal California found no such assault, and after exhaustive investigations never charged Hegseth with any crime. (The “victim” refused a police officer’s offer to speak with Hegseth so the investigators could gain insight into who was the more credible historian of their interlude.)

Read the police report and at best Hegseth seems to have had a drink-inspired consensual one-night stand with an adult, married woman. At worst, he showed poor judgment in a) drinking to excess after a keynote speech, b) hooking up with a complete stranger whose husband was asleep in a nearby room, and c) concluding a non-disclosure form with someone who post facto sought to leverage their consensual escapade into veritable blackmail.

If one reviews the two versions of the incident, one concludes that the woman who was supposed to be his contact/hostess for his keynote address was herself drinking too much, for too long that evening ignored her husband and two children in a hotel room nearby while she was up to the late hours in a bar, accompanied Hegseth voluntarily to his room, and obviously later felt like an idiot/fool after having had intercourse with a celebrity stranger (the complainant revealed this shocking reality of being assaulted only days later when she had sex with her husband).

Again, if one reads the entire report (in his version, she assumes the superior position in coitus after a mutual discussion of whether to complete the act without a prophylactic), one concludes that the woman involved felt regret that she had cheated on her nearby husband, stayed up late with a complete stranger, told her husband in texts that she was drinking too much, ended up in Hegseth’s room, only later claimed assault in part no doubt to temper the anger of her betrayed husband, and wished to get even for the undeniable humiliation by the nondisclosure form and of course the recent disclosure of the not-so-non-disclosure form.

In sum, Hegseth (who was separated from his wife at that time) seven years ago showed bad judgment and may have come off to her in retrospect as a cad, but he is neither a rapist nor a sexual assaulter. And his accuser has far less credibility than, say, a Tara Reade, who convincingly accused Biden of sexual assault/rape and whom many of Hegseth’s current leftist accusers back in 2019 utterly dismissed as a nut.

Another complaint is that Hegseth, who retired as a major, did not enjoy high command. Nor did he run a large corporation. Nor has he ever been elected to anything (he pulled out of a senate primary). So how can the Fox commentator direct a nearly $850 billion Pentagon budget?

Perhaps the way he became valedictorian of his high school class, or excelled at Princeton and Harvard, or proved a brave combat platoon leader in two brutal wars, or wrote four best-selling books, or mastered the daily demands of appearing on national television. In each endeavor, he has proved successful and at each step matured.

Remember, Trump picks his nominees precisely because they are not part of the corporate/deep-state nexus and thus are vaccinated from its enticements. As disrupters, they should be outsiders who want nothing from the bureaucracies that they will run other than to reform and improve them.

Preferably they should be proven critics of the status quo; so, Hegseth is a published critic of the Pentagon, in the way RFK, Jr. is of HHS, as Pam Bondi is of the DOJ she will direct, as John Ratcliffe is of the CIA, and on and on.