Pete Hegseth is, I believe, still on his way to being confirmed. We have been watching Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) as Republican senators who have reportedly been on the fence. Those first three have not said how they are going to vote. Ernst has said she will support Pete and voted him out of committee after his confirmation hearing.
So while we are still a question mark on those three, we don’t really care. He can afford to lose them. If those are the only three ‘no’ votes on the GOP side, then it will be a 50-50 tie in the Senate and Vice President J.D. Vance would cast the deciding vote for Pete.
The Latest Smear
But as the Senate slow rolls the final vote, Democrats are saying they need more information and more time. We then got an eleventh-hour submission from the ex-wife of one of Pete’s brothers, who I am told is a far-left Democrat who never liked Pete. She came forward this week to say he was some sort of an abuser to his second wife Samantha.
Danielle Hegseth, Pete Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, submitted an affidavit alleging the secretary of defense nominee had a problem with alcohol and his behavior caused Samantha to fear for her safety. In the sworn affidavit, she said it is her “personal opinion that Hegseth is unfit for the position of secretary of defense.”
This woman says he is an abuser and knows that because her eight years married to the brother mostly overlapped Pete’s marriage to Samantha. She claimed the behavior was to the point where Samantha had a code word she would text if she thought she was in trouble. And she said Samantha did text her the code word one time, which, in her view, signifies that she was afraid of Pete.
What We Know
Okay, let’s hear the rest of the story. What happened next? Did this woman call the police? Did the police visit Pete’s house? Did they arrest Pete? Was there a domestic violence complaint officially made? And most importantly, what does Samantha Hegseth say?
Samantha Hegseth denied this to the FBI. She said he never physically abused her, which left me, as a lawyer, wondering if she was leaving the door open to emotional abuse. That comes with all sorts of question marks, especially when a couple has gone through a divorce with cheating involved. I am sure they had some very volatile arguments when that was revealed and when he impregnated Jen, who became his third wife. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some very brutal rhetorical fights, but that is not necessarily abuse.
With that, I went digging further to find the divorce papers and the order issued by the judge in the divorce proceeding. It makes it really clear what actually happened there. The Minnesota Family Court judge said in the divorce proceeding that neither Pete nor Samantha Hegseth claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse. He said he was making no determination whatsoever that there was probable cause to believe that one parent has been physically abused or threatened with physical abuse by the other parent.
Now, I think the alleged hiding in the closet and texting a safe word to your sister-in-law would qualify as feeling that you had been threatened with physical abuse. But this judge found that did not happen. And when asked recently by the FBI whether she was abused, Samantha Hegseth said there was no physical abuse.
You tell me whether this is the Hail Mary pass by Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and others.
Media Spin
So, what do we get from all of this? We get the media running with the headlines: ‘He’s accused of abuse,’ ‘Pete is an abuser.’ In some publications, they don’t even print that the actual ex-wife says it is not true. Places like The New York Times stick that in the eighteenth paragraph of their story because they want to do the damage to him without actually telling the truth.
The New York Times’ main article on Tuesday ran with the headline “Hegseth Ex-Sister in Law Tells Senators He Was ‘Abusive’ to Second Wife.” The sub-headline read, “A woman once married to the brother of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee, submitted a sworn statement to the Senate in a late-hour complication to his confirmation. His lawyer denied her account.” How about mentioning that the alleged abuse victim denied it as well in your sub-headline, New York Times?
A CBS Evening News report from Nikole Killion – who has exactly the right last name because that is what she has been trying to do to Pete Hegseth – made no mention of Samantha Hegseth’s disavowals of the allegations in this ex-sister-in-law’s affidavit. CBS News didn’t even want to tell its audience that the ex-wife – the alleged abuse victim – has denied it on the record.
NBC News was the first to report the story of the affidavit in a joint-byline piece by Julie Tsirkin, Sarah Fitzpatrick, and Courtney Kube. To give you a sense of who you are dealing with, Tsirkin once called journalism “frightening” because of Donald Trump.
“The greatest challenge was realizing I was entering the business at a frightening time,” she told the Rutgers alumni magazine. “In almost every single speech I logged from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, there was a jab at the free press.” She went on to say how challenging it was for her to “balance emotional involvement and objective journalism.”
Well, I’m not sure she is doing such a great job of that over at NBC News, where she filed this report on Pete that was obviously an attempted political hit. And so impressed was NBC Nightly News with her reporting that they did not even bother to include it in their broadcast.
Megyn’s Prediction
The important thing in all of this is that we think Pete Hegseth is still going to be confirmed. It is now Thursday, and they are saying there will be a vote Friday night or the wee hours of Saturday morning. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is basically saying, ‘We are not leaving. Get your cots. We are going to vote on Pete and others.’
I have a prediction that Jack Reed, Tim Kaine, etc., are not done. They are going to try to pull another rabbit out of their hat on Pete because they are really desperate to stop them. I think they smell blood in the water. They really want to derail one of Trump’s picks, and I think he is their favorite to get right now. But good luck.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 990 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.