“CHANGE AGENT”
For his part, Hegseth vowed on Tuesday to bring back a “warrior culture” to the US military.
“(Trump) believes, and I humbly agree, that it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm. A change agent,” Hegseth said in prepared remarks.
“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,” Hegseth added.
In a 2021 incident first reported by Reuters, Hegseth was branded an “insider threat” by a fellow member of the Army National Guard over his tattoos. Hegseth has said the incident led him to be pulled from Guard duty in Washington during President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“We cannot have a Defense Secretary whose fellow servicemembers feel concerned enough about to report as a potential insider threat,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a letter to Hegseth ahead of the hearing.
In recent weeks, Trump’s party has coalesced around his pick. “I look forward to discussing (Hegseth’s) plans to shake up DoD (Department of Defense) and protect the warfighter,” Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin said on Monday.
Still, the slim Republican Senate majority means that Hegseth can lose support from no more than three Senators to be confirmed, if Democrats and independents unite against him.
Cabinet nominees almost never lose Senate votes, because they typically are withdrawn if they seem to be in trouble.
The last nominee who was defeated was former Senator John Tower, a nominee to be Secretary of Defense, in 1989. Tower was investigated over claims of drunkenness and inappropriate behavior with women.
If confirmed, Hegseth could make good on Trump’s promises to rid the military of generals he accuses of pursuing progressive diversity policies.
Reuters has reported that the Trump administration was drawing up a list of generals to fire.
Hegseth, who has little management experience, would be in charge of an organisation with a nearly US$1 trillion budget, 1.3 million active-duty service members and nearly 1 million civilian workers.
The next Secretary of Defense will face a number of major overseas issues, including active conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the expansion of China’s military, though it is unclear how much time will be spent on them during the hearing.
