Pete Hegseth passed his confirmation hearing with flying colors. After Pete s testimony, the only concern left about his nomination is whether or not he committed war crimes. We have the highlights and much more on the Michael Knowles Show.
00:03:31.680Pete Hegseth destroyed these Democrat senators.
00:03:35.560If this were 2015, 2016, the YouTube video would read, Pete Hegseth destroys with facts and logic and poise and composure all of these Democrat senators who are trying to tank him.
00:03:49.060The top line executive summary for what happened yesterday is President Trump's transition team sent one of their most controversial nominees out first.
00:04:00.460Pete Hegseth was the canary in the coal mine.
00:04:02.600Let's see how tough these Democrat senators are going to be.
00:04:05.260Then, after Pete, for today, tomorrow, for the foreseeable future, it all the really easy nominees who were going to sail through no problem.
00:04:14.900Then the other controversial nominees, Tulsi Gabbard, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Cash Patel, they were all off in the future at some undetermined date.
00:04:23.360Clearly, the transition team and the Republicans in the Senate were waiting to schedule all of those controversial nominees until after they figured out how Pete did.
00:04:34.080Pete passed his test with flying colors.
00:04:37.180He could not possibly have done better.
00:04:39.300I don't just say it because I like the guy and he's a friend of mine.
00:04:41.640It was a grand slam, which is good not only for Pete.
00:04:47.300He's going to be the secretary of defense.
00:04:49.620It's great news for Tulsi, for Bobby Kennedy, for Cash Patel, really for all of the nominees.
00:04:57.260Pete's performance yesterday made President Trump's job much, much easier.
00:05:01.980We are not going to have a repeat, I strongly suspect, of 2016, where it took days and weeks and months and years to get Trump's nominees through the Senate.
00:05:11.320I think these guys are going to move very quickly.
00:07:15.340The Army revised standards for the Army combat fitness test a little over two years ago,
00:07:21.440because women could not meet the standards.
00:07:25.680Julio Rosas at The Blaze just posted after this ridiculous grilling.
00:07:30.920He said, never forget, the Marine Corps did a nine-month study on women in combat units versus male-only combat units,
00:07:36.560which showed the male-only units outperformed the integrated units at nearly every event and sustained fewer injuries.
00:07:44.280Obama's Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus, said the study was just sexist toward women.
00:07:48.980Until the Obama administration, pretty much everyone agreed women should obviously not serve in combat roles,
00:07:55.200not only because men are stronger than women physically, period, punto y basta, no further discussion required,
00:08:01.760but also at a deeper level because it is a sick society that thinks that it is appropriate to send women out to the front lines to catch bullets from jihadis.
00:09:02.660And my answer is yes, exactly the way that you caveated it.
00:09:07.840Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, combat roles, given the standards remain high,
00:09:14.780and we'll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases.
00:09:21.360That'll be part of one of the first things we do at the Pentagon, is reviewing that in a gender-neutral way,
00:09:26.520the standards ensuring readiness and meritocracy is front and center.
00:09:31.780But absolutely, it would be the privilege of a lifetime, if confirmed, to be the Secretary of Defense for all men and women in uniform who fight so heroic.
00:11:11.060When Pete says, I would be so proud to be the Secretary of Defense for all the men and women of the armed forces, that's a 100% true, obvious statement.
00:11:20.440Women have always had roles in and around the military.
00:11:24.420Women have always had roles in service of the national defense.
00:11:27.320It's just that back when we were at least even slightly civilized, we didn't send women out to the front lines to catch bullets to protect the men.
00:14:00.340You want to talk about Pete's romantic history?
00:14:04.400You want to insinuate that Pete has a problem with alcohol based on nothing?
00:14:09.960You want to go, hey, how about you guys quit accusing Pete and take a look at yourselves?
00:14:15.740Senator Kaine, 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?
00:14:24.000How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night?
00:14:29.780Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign for their job?
00:14:34.260And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have.
00:14:37.500And then how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives?
00:15:09.320These Democrat senators who are disreputable people, many of them are deeply disreputable people, have the audacity to attack Pete for what?
00:15:19.000Based on nothing, truly based on nothing, they accuse him of being a drunk.
00:15:24.120I've been around the U.S. Senate a little bit.
00:15:28.000I've been around Washington, D.C. a little bit.
00:15:30.040Some of these votes in the Senate, like Votarama, they'll go into the wee small hours of the morning.
00:15:35.720You think those senators haven't been at dinner?
00:15:37.280You think they haven't been thrown back a few glasses of wine, maybe a few martinis?
00:15:42.980I can tell you with certainty, those guys toss back a few and sometimes they walk to the Capitol.
00:17:06.140But I do want to get to Tim Kaine before we move on.
00:17:08.200Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, decided that it would be a good idea to use Pete Hegseth's little kid as a cudgel to try to beat back his nomination.
00:17:24.140Can 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?
00:18:03.940Tim Kaine has voted repeatedly for years and years to murder at a national scale children who are born in inconvenient or unplanned circumstances.
00:18:17.560Pete Hegseth thinks we need to defend children and protect the innocent.
00:18:21.200And for that, for Pete Hegseth's moral clarity on a very important issue, Tim Kaine decides he's going to use that, going to use his own little kid to try to tank his nomination.
00:18:34.700Absolutely revolting display from Tim Kaine.
00:18:37.800He should be deeply ashamed of himself.
00:18:39.780The words coming out of his mouth are the words of the devil.
00:19:01.900Because Pete, unlike Tim Kaine, doesn't think we should murder children who are inconveniently conceived or born in unplanned circumstances.
00:19:11.600And then Tim Kaine, almost worse, actually, in Tim Kaine's display, was when he came out and he just leveled all of these hypothetical questions at Pete Hegseth.
00:19:23.720And then he didn't seem to know what a hypothetical question is.
00:19:27.100Did you ever engage in any acts of physical violence against any of your wives?
00:19:33.520But you would agree with me that if someone had committed physical violence against a spouse, that would be disqualifying to serve as secretive defense, correct?
00:19:41.280Senator, absolutely not have I ever done that.
00:19:44.480You would agree that that would be a disqualifying offense, would you not?
00:19:48.880Senator, you're talking about a hypothetical.
00:41:49.380He says, we're going to make them pay their fair share.
00:41:50.960The left and the right have been caught in this debate, running around in circles over who among the Americans to tax, to make them pay their fair share.
00:42:08.380Hey, how about we make our adversaries, or if you want to look at it from a different perspective, our imperial subjects pay their fair share.
00:42:18.740We're the global hegemon still, even though China's on the rise.
00:42:22.260So, if you think about this in more classical political terms, usually empires grab money from the people that they have conquered.
00:42:31.080And America conquers more through soft power and NGOs than through horrid military power.
00:42:35.660But regardless, we're the global empire.
00:42:37.340So, how about we benefit a little bit from that?
00:42:40.760We have less internal strife, and then we don't need to worry about American citizens sleeping in tents in North Carolina because they haven't been able to recover from a hurricane.
00:42:49.300We don't need to worry about people in Los Angeles who don't have homes because half that city burned down.
00:42:54.540We don't have to worry so much about American veterans who don't have a pillow to lie their head on at night while we're sending all sorts of money all around to the rest of the world.
00:43:07.220And then importing workers from the rest of the world to compete with American workers.
00:43:11.520So, you know, everyone else gets all the benefits of the American empire, but the American citizens seem to be getting short shrift.
00:43:16.520And Trump's saying, look, we're an empire, well, let's act like one, you know, and how about we give Americans some advantages as well, finally.
00:44:05.180And there were not too many shenanigans.
00:44:07.820Let's just say, let's just go with that.
00:44:09.220Is it possible that he lost support from 2016 to 2020 in part because he didn't totally lean in to all of the promises he made to give himself that coalition that brought him to power in 2016?
00:44:23.420You know, he didn't totally follow through on the tariffs.
00:44:25.820He started to, COVID kind of interrupted that.
00:44:27.600He didn't totally follow through on the wall and the deportations.
00:44:31.080He didn't totally lean into immigration restriction.
00:44:33.520He didn't totally, you know, what was the big legislative accomplishment was the tax cut.
00:44:38.480And the tax cut was fairly unpopular fairly quickly.
00:44:41.580I think, according to an NBC, Wall Street Journal poll in 2018, so about a year after the tax cut, the tax cut had something like 28% approval.
00:45:07.520He assembled a stronger coalition than Republicans previously had.
00:45:11.200But that means we got to live up to that now.
00:45:14.220There are going to be a lot of entrenched interests that want to smack all that stuff down and just go back to business as usual and go back to the policies of George W. Bush and go back to the policies of the followers of Ronald Reagan, who in many ways, I think, betray Ronald Reagan's real legacy.
00:45:28.940But regardless, are we just going to go back to that?
00:45:31.740We're just going to pretend it's the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s again or no?
00:45:36.500Are we going to follow through on President Trump's somewhat ambitious and clearly popular policies?
00:45:46.440Trump's signaling he's going to move forward with this.