For Pete’s Sake

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Populism under Donald Trump is an endless series of litmus tests designed to separate the holy Us from the heathen Them. No matter how many tests a Republican has passed, he or she is forever one failure away from becoming a heretic.

The new litmus test has to do with the career prospects of a former host of Fox & Friends Weekend.

“Pete Hegseth is the hill to die on,” David Limbaugh tweeted on Thursday of Trump’s flailing nominee to lead the Pentagon. “We must be fierce, loud, relentless, united and engaged.” Similar sentiments echoed across MAGA media, with special venom aimed at GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa for her heresy in announcing that she wasn’t yet sold on confirming Hegseth after meeting with him privately.

“Pete Hegseth is the hill to die on.” What would possess any human being not related to him to write that sequence of words?

It’s not as though he’s so uniquely qualified to lead the Defense Department as to be irreplaceable. On the contrary, the guy reportedly waiting to succeed him as nominee is superior by any measure and for several years was the second-most popular figure in the GOP.

And it’s not as though Hegseth is a MAGA celebrity a la Matt Gaetz or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in whom the Republican base is heavily invested. He was a C-tier right-wing infotainment figure until 23 days ago, not even worthy of hosting a Fox News weekday show. If Hegseth is a “hill to die on,” what would, say, Jesse Watters be? Mt. Suribachi?

It’s objectively weird that populists have taken to treating his nomination as a cause celebre, particularly with pitched battles over true postliberal stars like Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel soon to come.

“If Pete goes down, Kennedy and Tulsi will go down too,” The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles warned in defending Hegseth. “At that point, good luck getting any even remotely non-establishment pick through for any role.” But that’s all wrong, I think: If Gabbard and Kennedy are your priority, you should be willing to throw Hegseth to the wolves on the theory that Senate Republicans have the stomach to oppose only so many of Trump’s nominees. The GOP base won’t stand to see their hero’s choices rejected in toto by the likes of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.

The “RINOs” have claimed Gaetz’s scalp and might soon claim Hegseth’s, but there’s a limit and they know it. They’re already coming around on confirming Patel, probably the most obnoxious nominee of the bunch. And Trumpworld is letting it be known that they’ll go to war with the Senate to prevent “blue MAGA” icons like Kennedy and Gabbard from being Borked.

There’s no obvious political reason, then, to treat Pete Hegseth as “the hill to die on.” So why are so many MAGAs bent on it? 

I have three theories.

Theory one: Kavanaugh redux.

Populist Republicans have seen this movie before. At least they think they have.

The explosion of allegations about Hegseth’s drinking and personal misconduct resembles the campaign against Brett Kavanaugh after Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2018. Like Hegseth, Kavanaugh supposedly drank excessively in the past. Like Hegseth, he was accused of having assaulted a woman sexually. And like Hegseth, all of this somehow never came to light publicly until, conveniently, the moment he became a candidate for high office under Donald Trump.

Kavanaugh (almost) got #MeToo’d and now the heathen Them are trying to do the same to Pete Hegseth. MAGA Republicans are having flashbacks to that earlier confirmation battle and vowing that, through sheer strength of will, they can overcome the dirty trick being played on their nominee just as they did once before.

But the two men are not the same.

Kavanaugh had one semi-credible accuser (the circus organized by convicted felon Michael Avenatti doesn’t count) and she’s the only one who remembers anything amiss at the party where Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her. Her friend at the time, who was in the house when the attack was said to have occurred, told two New York Times reporters in 2019 that she has no confidence in the accuser’s recollections.

Hegseth, on the other hand, paid off the woman who accused him of assaulting her in 2017 and swore her to secrecy about the incident in a confidential settlement. His own mother accused him in an email the following year of having “abused” various women in his life “in some way.” (She now claims he’s a changed man.) And if NBC News’ sources are to be believed, Hegseth didn’t grow out of his youthful drunken escapades as he aged, as Kavanaugh apparently did. Three current Fox News employees told the network that Hegseth’s drinking “remained a concern up until Trump announced him as his choice to run the Pentagon.”

Imagine if Kavanaugh had answered the allegations of alcohol abuse by promising to quit if the Senate confirmed him. We don’t need to imagine it in Hegseth’s case: He did exactly that.

And of course, there’s the important difference between the two nominees insofar as one was eminently qualified for the position for which he was chosen while the other is not. It was easy to believe that the campaign against Kavanaugh was a desperate smear borne of fear of a formidable judicial talent who might vote to overturn Roe v. Wade if he reached the Supreme Court. The same logic isn’t there with Hegseth, who’d be less effective as defense chief than potential replacements like Ron DeSantis or Elbridge Colby. Why would the heathen Them want to see one of them in the job instead?

If there’s a meaningful #MeToo angle to the right’s “save Pete!” campaign, it has less to do with Hegseth being Kavanaugh 2.0, I suspect, than with the belief that #MeToo claims (against right-wing figures, at least) should no longer be taken seriously in Donald Trump’s America. The country just reelected someone who was found liable for sexual abuse last year. It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world again, and in that world we don’t “believe all women.” So what is a Republican Senate doing rejecting a Republican Cabinet nominee partly on those grounds?

All that being so, if you think it’s a coincidence that a woman like Joni Ernst has emerged as the chief scapegoat in populists’ pro-Hegseth crusade, that makes one of us.

Theory two: Fight, fight, fight.

For all his flaws, Pete Hegseth is a sharp guy with a keen sense of how to pander to populists honed by his years at Fox News.

Those who have read his books report that they’re teeming with demagoguery lab-designed to appeal to the MAGA id. Tirades about “wokeness,” calls for the “categorical defeat” and “utter annihilation” of the left, ominous warnings that Americans’ differences haven’t “yet” reached the point of needing to be settled with guns: He understands that ruthlessness in pursuit of cultural dominance, the touchstone of being a “fighter,” is the path to Trumpists’ hearts.

And he’s putting that knowledge to use to build right-wing support for his nomination.

On Thursday, Mediaite reported that Hegseth has been given “special permission” by Trump and his advisers to campaign for the defense job in media appearances. His strategy, unsurprisingly, has been to highlight his credentials as a “fighter”—literally. “I’ve Faced Fire Before. I Won’t Back Down,” he wrote on Wednesday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed touting his military record. The next day, he doubled down in a social media post: “Maybe it’s time for a [defense secretary] who has… Led in combat. Been on patrol for days. Pulled a trigger. Heard bullets whiz by. Called in close air support. Led medevacs. Dodged IEDs.”

America already has a defense secretary who led in combat, as it happens, one who used to wear four stars on his uniform. The same was true during Trump’s first term when James Mattis held the position. One could argue, in fact, that we should prefer someone who hasn’t served in uniform to lead the Pentagon because we value civilian control of the military. But Hegseth knows how the populist mind works: The more successful he is at framing his nomination as a referendum on strength and toughness rather than on leadership qualities and managerial competence, the more MAGA voters will view the opposition to him as weak and contemptible.

He showed off a different kind of “fighting” skill this week when he jousted with the right’s most hated enemy, the mainstream media:

Devotion to the leader, scorn for the press, and pugnacity on camera are supreme political virtues to modern Republicans. Hegseth’s performance was plainly designed to capitalize on that. (And reportedly impressed Trump, unsurprisingly.) The burst of enthusiasm we’re seeing for him online may be no more complicated than a Pavlovian reaction carefully engineered by the nominee to get the MAGA base emotionally invested in his success. Whether he’ll perform well in the job of defense secretary is irrelevant; the only “success” that matters to his champions now, perhaps, is seeing him overcome opposition from the media and “RINOs” like Ernst and getting confirmed.

No wonder, then, that Trump and J.D. Vance each voiced their support for Hegseth in posts on Friday. That doesn’t mean they’re committed to sticking with him until January, I don’t think—DeSantis, the nominee-in-waiting, notably will attend the Army/Navy game with Trump next week—but it does suggest that Hegseth’s fight-fight-fight offensive has ginned up enough grassroots goodwill that Trump is now reluctant to yank the nomination a la Matt Gaetz.

He’s going to make Ernst and other Senate Republicans pronounce Hegseth dead on arrival so that they, not he, will take the brunt of populist anger.

And for MAGA influencers who have come out hard on behalf of the nominee, I assume that’s an acceptable outcome. The great drawback for right-wing propagandists in seeing the GOP win total control of government last month is that it reduces the number of available scapegoats for their grievances. Because they don’t have Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer to kick around anymore, they’ll turn to kicking Republican wimps in the Senate for being nervous about having an alleged dissolute alcoholic with a zipper problem in charge of the Pentagon.

Populism craves enemies, insatiably. Joni Ernst shouldn’t take it personally that she’s the villain this week. It was just her turn.

Theory three: The grift goes on.

Occam’s razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The simplest explanation for the sudden “save Pete!” chatter among MAGA influencers is that Hegseth and/or his allies probably called in favors and put them up to it as part of his wider media offensive. The “grassroots” campaign is astroturf.

Radio host Erick Erickson seems to share that suspicion. “The hive mind is convinced both that Joni Ernst and the Military Industrial Complex [are] trying to sabotage Pete Hegseth,” he wrote on Friday. “It’s not true, but when the social media agitators of the right are paid to seed a thought, truth doesn’t matter.”

I have no reason to believe that any money changed hands (although only a fool would rule it out!), but financial motives are always in the mix with right-wing propagandists. Go to bat for Hegseth and he might blurb your next media endeavor. Or promote it on Fox News. Or get you invited onto Fox as a commentator, the fondest dream of every young Trump apologist holding down a job in what used to be conservative media.

Some might be going to bat for him unbidden, hoping to catch his attention by making a show of their support and eventually reaping the rewards of his gratitude. A few might already have a Fox appearance or two under their belts and believe that, because Hegseth was pleasant to them in the green room, it’s only fair that they endorse him for command of the United States military.

If you cater to an audience of Trump fanatics, there’s no sound financial reason to say “no” when one of the president-elect’s flunkies finds himself in political trouble and needing support. Even if you’re privately put off by the allegations of Hegseth’s behavior and wary of seeing him gain power, you face the same trap that Fox News faced after the 2020 election. There’s always some hungry, less scrupulous rival willing to pass the latest dubious populist litmus test; by choosing to fail it, you risk losing your audience to them.

So maybe the “save Pete!” upswell is mostly a function of competitive pressure, with the various alleged “fighters” in MAGA media forced to keep pace with each other to preserve their populist credibility.

But if all of that is too cynical for you, I can imagine a non-financial way in which Secretary Pete Hegseth would owe the postliberals who’ve taken up his cause.

Most of the other nominees for top-tier positions in the new Cabinet have some sort of political stature they’ve built independently of Trump and Trump’s base. Marco Rubio, Michael Waltz, Elise Stefanik, and Tulsi Gabbard served in Congress; Kristi Noem and Doug Burgum are governors; Pam Bondi is Florida’s attorney general; even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite never having held public office, has been known for decades as a prominent activist—and of course as the son and nephew of legendary politicians.

Hegseth has no stature of his own. He led a couple of small veterans organizations, not very successfully, and sat on the couch at Fox News. The unlikely opportunity he has to become a major world figure derives entirely from his skill in charming Donald Trump by evincing the sort of noisily authoritarian scorn for liberal norms that Trump admires. 

If the “save Pete!” groundswell manages to intimidate enough Senate Republicans to get him confirmed, he’ll owe Trump and Trump’s most obnoxious online followers everything. It was never likely that Hegseth would refuse an unlawful order issued to him by his hero—that’s why he was chosen for the job, I’m sure—but if Trump and MAGA go to the mat for him and salvage his imperiled nomination, I can’t imagine he’d ever tell them no. Lead the world’s most powerful military or be exiled back to weekend oblivion at Fox: How badly do you think Pete Hegseth wants this job? Badly enough to stand and salute when the president commands him to do something grossly immoral?

I think he wants it reeeeeally badly and that the postliberal influencers taking up for him this week know it. One way or another, financially or politically, he’ll owe them everything. And, eventually, they’ll collect.