>> mr. chairman, i would ask unanimous consent that two letters be submitted for the record, one letter signed by numerous organizations, including the government accountability project. the other signed by several organizations, including the truman national security project. >> without objection, so ordered. now, senator kelly. senator rosen got here after the gavel went down. do you really want to go ahead of her? >> i am going to defer to my good friend and colleague, senator rosen. >> that is a really great state of nevada. really good decision. senator rosen, you are recognized. >> and thank you, senator kelly. i owe you one. >> thank you. chairman wicker, ranking member reid, for holding this hearing. and, mr. hegseth, i appreciate your service and your willingness to serve again. however, i am deeply disappointed that you would not agree to meet with me. as other members have said on this committee prior to this hearing, as is the precedent for this

committee and others. so let me tell you a little bit about what i would have talked about had you made yourself available prior to the hearing. nevada is home to the premier aviation training ranges for both the air force and the navy, the largest ammunition depot in the world, and the only place in the country where we are able to verify the reliability of our nuclear stockpile without the need for explosive testing. the nevada national guard is one of the few, only few units across the country with the mission of fighting wildfires. it's for another hearing and currently activated to fight the devastating fires around los angeles. in support of our neighbors. we therefore play a critical role in our national security, and the person who holds the position of secretary of defense matters greatly to nevada service members and our military equities. but every single person who serves in the military, we've talked about my colleagues, esteemed colleagues have talked about recruitment and retention. one day they will

become a veteran. so my veterans and the folks who are serving active duty now are concerned about what you think. dod does not have jurisdiction over nevada's 200,000 plus veterans. but i am interested in your views about the service members once they've transitioned out of the military, given the influence you would have while they're in service, if confirmed in 2019 on a segment of fox and friends, you said that veteran service organizations vsos, i'm going to, quote, encourage veterans to apply for every government benefit they can ever get after they leave the service. you stated you don't want to, quote, be dependent on government assistance from the va based on injuries or illnesses that might have arisen from your military service. so i'm just going to ask you a few yes or no questions about veterans understanding. you don't have jurisdiction, but this is important to our morale. it's important to our recruitment and is important to our retention. and it is important to how we respect others in this country. so yes

or no, please. do you believe that vsos are wrong to support veterans in obtaining the benefits that they have rightfully earned and deserved when they sign that line like you did for your service? >> senator? yes, sir. veterans deserve the benefits they've earned. i have been in many battles with traditional veterans service organizations over differences of opinion about how to deliver those services. >> yes or no veterans, do you believe vsos are wrong? >> which is a very diblasio's is a very broad term. we were a vso also, ma'am, but so some of those services took a traditional should they be able to help the veterans obtain the benefits that they have earned? >> yes or no? should anyone be able to help? >> every veteran should have rapid access to all the benefits. >> veterans should be ashamed for having sought and obtained the benefits that they have earned. do you think veterans benefits? >> senator, i think should be ashamed as a nation of the amount of veterans that commit suicide because they hit a brick wall, they hit they commit suicide because they hit a brick wall of the bureaucracy of the

va. take that as a yes. are not courage enough? >> how about veterans who suffer lasting injuries or illnesses due to their military service? do you do you think they deserve our support and assistance? i mean, your your your answers to these are too broad. people want to know, are you willing to support our veterans organizations that will help our veterans get every damn thing that they deserve, because they signed on the dotted line to keep us safe, just like you did? i respect that, will you, senator? >> with all due humility, i don't know that there's anyone in this room over the last 20 years that have worked harder to ensure that our veterans are taken care of. it has been a passion of my life alongside with so many on this dais to make sure that veterans receive. and it is a recruiting crisis when veterans are not dependent on the government. they don't. you said veterans, sons and daughters on the government. >> do you believe that veterans getting these benefits are dependent on the government, or do you believe it's a benefit they've earned and deserve through their service? >> it's a benefit they've earned and a hand up to these are your

words then. >> so you have again changed your position where you believe the veterans are dependent now you believe they've earned and deserved it. i just think it's disrespectful to change that position. these are these are benefits that people may need throughout their life and may not know when they need them or how they're going to need them, and they need to be there when they do. thank you. i'll move on to my next question. america's role in the world. our alliances, the threats america is facing. they're serious. they're wide ranging, from china to russia to iranian backed terrorism. so do you agree with the national defense strategy that the us cannot compete with china, russia and their partners alone and certainly cannot win a war that way? and this is a quote from the national defense strategy. it's your interpretation that american first foreign policy is america alone. does that include abandoning our allies and partners such as nato, taiwan,

israel and others? and if we can't win alone and we don't strengthen our strategic partnerships, i would say that position, your position places on a strategic path to lose to our adversaries. so maybe you're okay with choosing that path for america. i want to know how you square that position with the positions you articulated in your book, where you wrote that nato is at relic at best, a distraction and should be scrapped and remade. are you okay with sending us down a path where we can't win? >> senator, the world has had our friends in the world have had no better ally. our allies and partners have had no better friend than president donald trump, who's reinvigorated a nato alliance. donald trump, who's stood behind israel in every way, in ways this administration has not. he has ensured that the nato alliance has become far more robust. he worked donald trump, worked with allies in the pacific, as well as donald trump going to stand behind ukraine. >> are you going to stand behind ukraine? you say he's the

strongest president. president elect trump said he will end the war in ukraine before he takes office. okay. it's a less than a week before he's inaugurated. to the best of your knowledge, do you have knowledge of a plan that he's going to use to rapidly end the war with ukraine? do you believe it's feasible? that does not make unacceptable concessions to vladimir putin, who is a brutal dictator. and are you going to give president elect trump the military advice that you have given others to achieve the objective of us winning the war in ukraine? how do you think a rapid end to the war that vladimir putin started will affect the united states standing across the world? >> senator, i will always give clear guidance, my clear guidance, best guidance to the president of united states on matters like that. >> do you think that if we concede to vladimir putin, that that will hurt our credibility with our allies and partners? and do you not believe that our adversaries are watching? >> you can take that for the record, mr. hegseth. >> senator schmidt, thank you,

mr. chairman. i'd like to submit for the record a letter submitted by mr. christopher on the former director of operations for vets for freedom. >> mr. on his letter states that the suggestion quote the suggestion that funds were misused for personal gain lavish parties or other improper purposes is categorically false. throughout my time working with pete hegseth, he consistently demonstrated exceptional integrity and leadership. i asked unanimous consent to enter this letter into record without objection, so ordered, senator schmidt. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. hegseth, good to see you here today. thank you for your service. thank you and your willingness to serve. i also want to thank you for your clarity in articulating the vision you have for the department of defense and restoring an ethos, a warrior ethos, which is in stark contrast to the ethos we've seen in the last four years, which is of weakness and wokeness. and i want to drill down on a few things specifically and exactly how we've gotten to where we've

gotten with recruiting and morale. di there's been a little bit of discussion about this, but for those watching at home, di is not about giving everybody opportunity. it is rooted in cultural marxism. the idea that you pit the room, any room with oppressor versus oppressed, it's race essentialism, and it is poison. it has no business whatsoever in our military. i think the american people have spoken loudly and clearly about this. they're tired of this. they're tired of woke ideology. and to my democrat colleagues on the other side, if you haven't picked up on that, you miss the plot, because that's what november 5th partially was about. and so let's talk specifically about some of these dei programs that have been funded in our academies, specifically the air force academy. it was advised as disfavored language to refer to your mom and dad as mom and dad.

okay. dear mom and dad, i'm writing home. don't say that. that's insane. we're all just people. you can't say that either. and in an effort to police this in a 1984 orwellian novel, there was actually an eyes and ears program to rat on your fellow students who might say mom and dad or just say, in a tough situation, you know what? we're all just people can't say that this wasn't limited, by the way, to our academies. the secretary of the air force, our current secretary of the air force, in a memo from august of 2022, thought we had too many white officers advocated for quotas. and if you crunch the numbers, that meant that 5800 white officers who worked really hard should be

fired in the united states of america. i don't know how we got here. and by the way, the air force isn't alone here. the navy sort of touted a drag queen influencer. this stuff is insane. and people wonder why recruiting is dropped off. and let me just go through a few numbers, and i want to get your comments on how we fix this, because it's gone completely off the rails in 2022, the army missed their recruiting goal of 60,000 soldiers by over 15,000. in 2023, the navy missed their recruiting goals by over 7000. in 2022, the air force couldn't only couldn't meet their standards, their numbers, even though they lowered their standards, they've lowered their standards to meet numbers. they still can't get to this. hegseth. we got to fix this. i think what you've demonstrated today is that you have the talent and the ability and the

desire to fix it. how are you going to fix it? >> well, senator, thank you for the question. first and foremost, up front, you have to tear out di and crt initiatives, root and branch out of institutions 100%. and then you have to put in army, navy and air force secretaries and others civilian positions at the helm who are committed to the same priorities that the president of the united states is. and if confirmed, the secretary of defense will be. send a clear message that this is not a time for equity. equity is a very different word than equality. equality is the bedrock of our military men and women. duty positions in uniform. black, white doesn't matter. we treat you equally based on who you are and the image of god as an individual. and we all get the same bad haircuts. you're not an individual. you're part of a group. equity prescribes some sort of an outcome based on differing attributes that we have that divide us. what skin

color are you? what what gender are you? and then infuse that into institutions which manifest in things like quotas, formal or informal, which does what to morale, sends it in the tubes, and it makes people feel like they're being judged by something other than how good they are at their job, which is poisonous inside institutions. >> so on top of this recruiting crisis, that wasn't enough for this administration. during the covid hysteria and in their attempt to fire 100,000 people who worked for bigger companies because they didn't get the covid shot or to mask five year olds, they decided also to make this a central plank in their policy at the pentagon. 8000 well-trained. so we got a recruiting crisis. 8000 well-trained men and women were fired, were fired. will you commit today? mr. hegseth, to recruit these folks back, to give them back pay and give them an apology from the united

states government for how they were disrespected? >> senator, i will commit to this because the commander in chief has committed to this, that not only will they be reinstated, they will receive an apology, back, pay and rank that they lost because they were forced out due to an experimental vaccine. >> thank you. and i'm a limited time, but i just want to say, for all the talk of experience and not coming from the same cocktail parties that permanent washington is used to, you are a breath of fresh air. and again, if you weren't paying attention to what this election was all about, it was about the disrupters versus the establishment. and the american people have had enough of business as usual for the same people that we line up for these same jobs who give us the same results. we need somebody who's going to go in there and fight for innovation, fight for change. i think you're that person, and i appreciate your willingness to sit here and

listen to some of these undignified attacks. it's ridiculous. thank you, captain mark kelly. >> you're recognized. thank you, mr. chairman. congratulations on your chairmanship. i want to make a request to the committee that we have a second round of questions. >> pursuant to the bipartisan staff agreement that we reached late last year. this will be one round of seven minute questions. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i'll be happy to recognize my colleague. mr. reid, i think it's important to note, for the record that when secretary hagel was here, we had three rounds of questioning and secretary carter was here. >> we had two rounds of questioning, and i cannot recall any time where i have denied, as a chairman, a member to ask for a second round and receive the second round. so we are, i think, violating the principles

of the committee. >> and i just want to go on the record and your your comment is noted. thank you. >> mr. hegseth. thank you for being here today. thank you for your service to this country. thank you. >> senator. >> few nominees come into this room with all the necessary experience to do this job, to be secretary of defense. we get that. it's a reflection on just how big of a job this is. what i want to understand is whether or not you bring any of the necessary experience that this job requires. and here's where i'm concerned. senator coleman, in introducing you. and this is a quote he said he has struggled and overcome great personal challenges, unquote. you walk in here saying that you've had personal and character issues in your past, including heavy drinking, which you wrote about, and you said, and this is a quote from you that you said, i

sit before you as an open book, yet you haven't actually said what personal challenges it is that you've overcome when you've been asked about them. so i'm going to give you an opportunity here to be as forthright as you say you want to be. so while leading concerned veterans of america, there were very specific cases cited by individuals about your conduct. i'm going to go through a few of them, and i just want you to tell me if these are true or false. very simple. a memorial day 2014 at a cva event in virginia, you needed to be carried out of the event for being intoxicated. >> senator. >> anonymous smears. just true or false? very simple. summer of 2014, in cleveland, drunk in public with the cva team. >> anonymous smears. >> i'm just asking for true or

false questions. true or false answers. an event in north carolina drunk in front of three young female staff members. after you had instituted a no alcohol policy and then reversed it. true or false? anonymous smears december of 2014 at the cva christmas party at the grand hyatt at washington, dc, you were noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to your room. is that true or false? >> anonymous smears. >> another time, a cva staffer stated that you passed out in the back of a party bus. is that true or false? >> anonymous smears. >> in 2014, while in louisiana on official business for cva, did you take your staff, including young female staff members, to a strip club? >> absolutely not. anonymous smears. >> so. is it accurate that the

organization reached a financial settlement with a female staffer who claimed to be at a strip club with you, and there was a colleague who attempted to sexually assault her? was there a financial settlement? >> senator, i was not involved in that. i don't know the nature of how that played out, but you understand there was a financial settlement for a young female staffer who accused another member of the organization, not you, of sexual assault in a strip club. we have multiple statements on the record referring to that. >> but you claim you were not there when that occurred? >> absolutely not. >> now, the behavior i cited, if true, do you think that this behavior of intoxication going into these type of establishments, women on your

staff being so uncomfortable that they have to file these sort of harassment claims? do you think this is appropriate behavior for a leader, senator, senator, the overwhelming majority of anyone who has worked for me, including the on the record statements that have been submitted to this with their name on it, on the record, men and women who worked with me every day are the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that testify to my leadership and professionalism in leading vets for freedom and concerned veterans for america. >> my leadership has been completely impugned on these veterans organizations that did fantastic work. >> mr. hegseth, i'm not even going to go overseas. i'm not even going to go into the accusations. >> financial books with integrity across the board. how many people? everybody who runs campaigns. >> i have limited time. i'm not going to get into the accusations that come from fox news. i know you have some of your fox news colleagues here. there are multiple instances of accusations against you about

drinking on the job. >> all anonymous, all false, all refuted by my colleagues who i worked with for ten years at 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. and the challenge here for me, mr. hegseth, only seen me be with is when there is discussion about personal challenges. >> and you admittedly had issues with heavy drinking. it's hard to kind of square this, to square the circle here. it's kind of a difficult thing to do. let me ask you if i have about a 90s left here. if, if you had to answer these questions about sexual assault against you and your drinking and your personal conduct, would it have been different if this if you were under oath? >> senator, all i'm pointing out is the false claims against me. >> okay. i take it you do not want to answer that question. i walked in, walked into into this hearing this morning, concerned that you haven't demonstrated adequate leadership in your civilian roles. and this is a

dangerous world we're living in here, and america cannot afford a secretary of defense who is unprepared for that mission. i'm going to leave with concerns about your transparency. you say you've had personal issues in your past, yet when asked about those very issues, you blame an anonymous smear campaign, even when many of these claims are not anonymous. which is it? have you overcome personal issues, or are you the target of a smear campaign? it can't be both. it's clear to me, to me that you're not being honest with us or the american people because, you know, the truth would disqualify you from getting the job. and just as concerning as each of these specific disqualifying accusations are, what concerns me just as much is the idea of having a secretary of defense who is not transparent. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back my two seconds. >> thank you, senator kelly. i

would at this point ask unanimous consent to introduce into the record letters by tina kingston, louisiana state director of concerned veterans for america, and holly talley, louisiana local director of concerned veterans for america, attesting to the appropriateness of mr. hecht's conduct with regard to female staffers. without objection, that is added to the record. and, senator banks, you are now recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome. mr. hegseth. you have conducted yourself very well today, in fact, so well that i believe it's incumbent upon this committee to confirm you asap to get you on the job to clean up the mess that we have at the pentagon ongoing at this moment because of the leadership there over the last four years, has failed us in president biden's first year in office, the

department of defense spent over 5 million man hours on quote unquote, counter extremism and diversity training. what you and i might call woke training or die. the administration has refused to provide us any more recent data than that first year, but we know that it's exponentially more man hours wasted on dei over the last four years. and i wonder, what do you make of that? what could those 5 million man hours in that first year of secretary austin and president biden's administration? what could those five hours, 5 million man hours have been used for? >> senator, that's a lot of service members sitting in a lot of briefs, hearing about a lot of threats or political perspectives that might be dangerous, that comport do not comport to threats that actually exist inside the force, or ideas

that introduce critical race theory or dei, or climate change initiatives that they and their commands have to conform to. and every time one of those happens, it gets pushed down the chain of command. that also includes new layers of leadership that have been created under this administration, committed to enforcing those types of dei and crt initiatives. so we hear 5 million man hours, and that sounds like a lot. the more troubling aspect is how many training hours that takes away from a company commander or battalion commander, or a wing commander who's out there trying to maintain their force, which is already constrained because of what the biden administration has done to the defense, budget and defense capabilities. so they're having to choose between the political prerogatives of the civilians who are demanding more dei and crt and gender quotas and the readiness of their forces. and i believe this pentagon is prepared because of our commander in chief for a secretary of defense. should i be confirmed? that focuses laser

focuses on these issues and they're ready to respond. they want to pack their rucksacks and go train because they understand we live in a dangerous world. >> i think that's an important point, a key point, because months later, while the priority of the biden austin led pentagon was on dei and woke training, one of the biggest embarrassments in american history happened when we lost 13 of our heroes in the botched withdrawal from afghanistan. secretary austin testified before the house armed services committee a couple of years ago, and, responding to a question from me, said he had, quote, no regrets about what happened in afghanistan. i wonder, what do you make of that, senator? >> shameful. they still tout it as the most successful airlift in american history, when what the rest of us all saw was true, laid before our eyes. utter failure, a destruction of a military legacy, their

abandonment of our allies, death of american troops, detriment to our reputation, and then no answers and no accountability on the other side. and then what was unleashed because of what happened in afghanistan, the october 7th attacks and invasion into ukraine, the world recognized weakness for what it was and who bore the brunt for it. the troops on the front lines at abbey gate doing an impossible job whose external security was the taliban, because there was no actual plan for this under the biden administration. and yet not a single person, the only person held accountable in those moments was a marine corps lieutenant colonel, who had the courage to stand up and say someone should be held accountable for that. his name is stu schiller. no one else involved has ever taken accountability for it. and when that microcosm becomes the reality of the perception of the american military, or america's commitment to victory and success and positive outcomes, the world responds to that. president trump is going to

restore real deterrence by bringing a real warrior culture back, rebuilding our military and ending wars properly. and if we have to fight them, winning them decisively. >> i served in afghanistan. you served in afghanistan 75, 75% of our nation's veterans disagree with how the withdrawal from afghanistan was handled, the embarrassment of it. what that's done, i believe, has directly impacted our historic recruitment crisis in this country, without a doubt. and you've already talked about that. but how do we fix it? how do we bring pride back to wearing the uniform for the next generation, to inspire them to do what you and i did to raise our right hand and take that oath and serve this great country? >> i really do think it it comes back to strong, clear leadership, patriotic, pro-american leadership that says we're not going to focus on all the other political prerogatives. that's why we all have political perspectives. i

said this before, and i'll say it again in uniform, none of that matters. you wear green, you wear blue, you bleed red. that's it. who you vote for doesn't matter. but when the perception of that changes, then you don't want people deciding whether to serve based on a political party in power. that's a dangerous thing for continuity inside your military. and it's fragile right now. president trump and if i'm confirmed with my leadership, we're going to restore the continuity of an apolitical military that acts decisively and only based on merit. i, you and i may sound basic, but they're fundamental. >> you and i agree that wokeness is weakness. mr. hegseth, do you support racial quotas in recruitment or promotions in the united states military? >> senator, i do not support any form of racial quota. >> do you support affirmative action in our nation's military academies? >> senator, i only support hiring and promoting and admitting the best and brightest, whatever their background is. >> i think that's very important. mr. hegseth lloyd

austin, the secretary, later went awol. he disappeared for days and never told the president, didn't even inform the president's chief of staff that he was going into the hospital. would that ever occur on your watch? >> i know, senator, i know in any one of my jobs, if i had decided to go awol for even a day or two in, in uniform or around that, that would have been a concern. >> i believe accountability matters. no one to this day has ever, as you've said, been held accountable for what happened in afghanistan. it was embarrassing to this country. it's impacted this country greatly. and i applaud you and president trump for bringing accountability back to our pentagon. with that, i yield back, chair recognizes the distinguished ranking member for unanimous consent request. >> mr. chairman, i would like to submit an article discussing some of the issues of readiness and die out. there has been a comment that 5.9 million man hours have been used for die.

general milley clarified that that is an estimate out of more than 2 billion man hours that the department of defense invested during the time period. >> where's this published, sir? >> this is published by megan myers, and i will get the. >> okay. >> military.com. i'm sorry. >> without objection, it will be admitted to the record and, senator slotkin, welcome to the committee. thank you. >> you're recognized. >> thank you, senator, and thank you for referencing the great carl levin as you introduced me. we miss him in michigan. for those who i haven't met in my one week that i've been sworn into the senate, i'm a cia officer recruited after nine over 11. i did three tours armed in iraq alongside the military, and have worked for four different secretaries of defense, both democrat and

republican, proudly, and watch them make decisions that literally determine the life and death of americans in the dark of night. i'm also a democrat representing a state that trump won, right? we both won on the same ballot. so i understand that president trump has the right to nominate his people. we are going to have policies that we disagree with. all of that to me comes very standard. what i think i'm most concerned with is that no president has the right to use the uniform military in a way that violates the us constitution and further taints the military as that apolitical institution that we all want. right? and our founders designed the system so that, you know, we had posse comitatus that we weren't going to use active duty military inside the united states and make american citizens potentially scared of their own military. we went through our own experience with that, with the british as the secretary of defense, you will be the one man standing in the

breach. should president trump give an illegal order, right? i'm not saying he will, but if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the commander in chief that would violate the us constitution? >> senator, thank you for your service, but i reject the premise that president trump is going to be giving illegal orders. >> no, i'm not saying he will. but if do you believe there is such a thing as an illegal order that joe biden or any other president donald trump could give, is there anything that a commander in chief could ask you to do with the uniform military that would be in violation of the us constitution, senator? >> anybody of any party could give an order that is against the constitution or against the law. >> right? okay. so and are you so are you saying that you would stand in the breach and push back if you were given an illegal order? >> i start by saying i reject the premise that president, i understand you've done your jen psaki illegal orders at all. >> mike, this isn't a

hypothetical, okay? your predecessor in a trump administration, secretary esper, was asked and did use uniformed military to clear unarmed protesters. he was given the order to potentially shoot at them. helos flew low in washington, dc as crowd control. he later apologized publicly for those actions. was he right or wrong to apologize? >> senator, i was there on the ground and i saw that. >> i saw i understand and i respect that i've been there. >> but you're about the level of secretary of defense involved in that moment. was he right to so he was legality and the constitution. >> was he right or wrong to apologize? >> i'm not going to put words in the mouth of secretary esper or anybody else. >> he said them himself. you don't have to. what are you scared of? did he do the right thing by apologizing? >> i'm not scared of anything, senator. say yes or no. you can say no. the laws and the constitution. okay. in any particular. >> donald trump asked for the active duty 82nd airborne to be deployed during that same time.

secretary esper has written that he convinced him against that decision. if donald trump asked you to use the 82nd airborne in law enforcement roles in washington, d.c, would you also convince him otherwise? >> i'm not going to get ahead of conversations i would have with the president. however, there are laws and processes inside our constitution that would be followed. >> president trump said in november that he is willing to consider using the active duty military against the, quote, enemy within. have you been personally involved in discussions of using the us military active duty inside the united states? >> senator i'm fine. i'm glad we finally got to the topic of border security equaling national security, because it's been abdicated and ignored for the last four years. >> that wasn't my question. i'm just asking, have you been involved? you're about to be the secretary of defense, potentially. have you been involved in discussions about using the active duty military inside the united states? >> senator, i am not yet the secretary of defense. i'm just

confirmed i would be party to any number of. >> so you haven't been in any of these? >> i would not reveal what i have discussed with the president of united states. >> have you been in conversations? you're again, you're going to be in charge of 3 million people. the active duty that i know you care about, i believe you care about. so have you been in conversations about using the active duty in any way, whether it's setting up in detention camps, policing dangerous cities. have you been involved in any of those conversations? certainly. >> i have been involved in conversations relating to doing things this administration has not, which is secure the southern border and not allow floods of illegals. so are you country through an invasion that threatens the american people? okay. and there are ways in which the military is already playing a role in that. to include 5000 national guardsmen from indiana and the us who are at the border right now allowing for border, will you ask? >> plenty of precedent military staff, detention centers? our us military is not trained in law

enforcement roles. i think you know that, right? we've seen how that mission is difficult for them in places like iraq and afghanistan, because that's not the training a uniformed military comes with. do you support the use of active duty military in supporting detention camps? >> senator, everything we will do would be lawful and under the constitution. but i recognize that this administration has abdicated its responsibility. president trump is going to restore order at the border, preserving our enemies from invading. and yes, he has said, sir, i get your filibustering, i get it, i get it. >> part of what happens in the spirit of preserving the institution that i think we both care about legitimately, the uniform code of military justice. i've heard a couple of different things. one, you said you will not change the uniform code of military justice, which is what governs justice system in the military. yes or no? you said that earlier. >> those are laws, senator, set by congress. >> okay. so you will not go to change it. you're not attempt to change it. you also said that jag officers are potentially people who put their own interests in their own medals

and promotions ahead of the troops. senator lindsey graham was a jag officer for most of his life. is that what you believe about those who implement our justice system in the us military? >> senator, i was speaking about particular jag officers i've had to deal with in my military career. are you going to get involved? member of the united states senate. >> are you a secretary of defense going to get involved in the implementation of the us military code of justice? >> senator, ultimately, it will be a big part of my job to evaluate decisions vis a vis. okay, so uniform code of military justice, have you seen the fairly is cq brown on your list in the warrior boards to be removed from his position? senator. every single senior officer will be reviewed based on meritocracy standards and lethality and commitment to lawful orders. they will be given. >> thank you, senator slotkin. i now recognize senator shaheen for a unanimous consent request. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have a request from a former

general who served 35 years, dennis leach, who most recently was the commander of the 94th regional readiness command at fort devens, mass. who has asked that his letter opposing mr. hastert's nomination be entered into the record? >> is there objection? without objection, it will be entered. also, i present a host of letters and op eds from former coworkers at vets for freedom and concerned vets for america, as well as fox news channel. i also have letters and op eds from many veterans and iraqis and afghanis who were helped by mr. hegseth. i ask unanimous consent to introduce these letters and op eds without objection, is so ordered. senator sheehy, you've been very patient.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. entering a support letter in for mr. hegseth submitted by nearly 90 former soldiers who served with pete in combat. >> i would like to submit a statement from 86 of them who support his nomination. >> although they come from different units and ranks, the signatories commend mr. hegseth for his selfless leadership, love of his soldiers and commitment to our country. >> two items. sorry, one item. i ask unanimous consent to enter this. without objection, it will be entered. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> pete, i'm going to ask you questions because i want to hear your answer. >> how many genders are there? >> tough one. >> senator, there are two genders. >> i know that. well, i'm a sheehy, so i'm on board. >> what is the diameter of the rifle round fired out of an m4a1 rifle. >> that's a five, five, six. >> how many push ups can you do? >> i did five sets of 47 this

morning. >> what do you think? >> what do you think? >> our most important strategic bases in the pacific are in the pacific. >> guam is pretty strategically significant. >> how many rounds of five, five, six. can you fit into the magazine of an m4 rifle? >> it depends on the magazine, but standard issue is 30. senator. >> and what size round is the m9? beretta standard issue sidearm for the military. >> fire a nine millimeter. >> senator, what kind of batteries do you put in your night vision? goggle? >> duracell. >> so right there, you're representing qualifications that show you understand what the warfighter deals with every single day on the battlefield. you understand what happens on the front line where our troops will be. and what happens unfortunately in this country is decisions made in rooms like this. bad decisions end up in

dead 17, 18, 19 year old americans. and those those americans rarely come from families that sit in rooms like this. they come from lower middle income families who sometimes the military are on the way out and they join because maybe they want to go to college, maybe they had no other choice. maybe they love this country, but for whatever reason, they joined and they sign on the dotted line. and when people like us screw up, they don't come home. and that's the one thing that i care about, is you remember when i shut the door when you came with your entourage? senator coleman, who i've known for a long time, and you and i sat together, asked you one question. >> with that question was, are you going to have the backs of the warfighters? >> exactly what is going to be your number one priority? and i don't care, frankly, what all these letters and articles say. i've been a part of a smear campaign, too, i get it. i care that you're going to have one thing in mind when you sit in that chair in that five sided building, and you told me what that was. so with that, you have my support. i'm sorry you have to go through a process like this, but it is one of the most

important jobs in the world. we've got to make sure you're ready for it. i thank you for your answers. i got one final question that's very important to me. this is more of a of a technical question, but i think it's to fix the army in this country is a 1 or 2 year problem. we can make bullets, we can make rifles, fix the air force might be a five year problem to fix. our navy is a decades long pursuit. how are you going to fix our national? you don't have all the power. we're not. we're not china. unfortunately, you can't snap your fingers. but how are you going to lead an initiative within the dod to reinvigorate our national shipbuilding industry? so we were able to compete with china because freedom of navigation is critical to our economy and the global economy. it's going to be a very important task for you to complete. >> it's a critical question, senator, and that's why i'm grateful that president trump has said definitively to me and publicly that shipbuilding will be one of his absolute top priorities of this administration. so a lot of it does go into pulling things up into the osd office, secretary of defense's office to shine a

spotlight on it, to make sure the bureaucracy bureaucracy doesn't strangle important initiatives that need to happen. you need to we need to reinvigorate our defense industrial base in this country to include our shipbuilding capacity. some of it is on the east, some of it's on the west, some of it's on the great lakes. the invest the workforce problems that our shipyards are facing are significant. and there's been a big investment from this committee. i know in a lot of those places, because of the shortfalls, work, manpower issues, everything else. but we also see adversaries that have been able to innovate themselves in ways that their shipbuilding capacity is. i won't reveal it at this hearing. multitudes and multitudes beyond our capabilities. so it needs to be a rapid investment, a rapid fielding, and then we need to incentivize outside entities to fill the gap. we talk a lot about uavs. uavs are very important, but there's also a future of uav's unmanned underwater vehicles that will be a part of amplifying the impact of our navy, because our this

administration has allowed our number of ships to drop below 300, it sets a projection of 340 or 350, but doesn't create the capacity to actually address it. and so if we're going to defend our interests, our allies, and put america first, we're going to have to be able to project power. that means shipbuilding. it means historic investments in our defense industrial base there, and then also driving innovation and cost savings in ways that only business leaders inside the pentagon can do. >> when i'd add, i don't think any board in the world would have hired steve jobs or elon musk or mark zuckerberg when they founded their companies either. so this country is founded by by young people who had a great vision. thank you for being willing to serve your country again. and thanks for coming here today. i yield back. chairman. >> thank you, senator sheehy. you yield back the balance of your time. mr. ranking member, can we agree that you and i

will? notify members of a specific time until which the record will remain open for submission of questions? for the record. yes, mr. chairman, that that will be a day or two. this concludes today's hearing. i want to thank the witnesses for and their families. and this hearing is adjourned. >> thank you. thank you. thank you. >> good day. i'm chris jansing, live at msnbc headquarters in new york city for four hours and 15 minutes. now, we have been watching a sharply contentious hearing on capitol hill with donald trump's pick for defense secretary pete hegseth working to convince skeptical senators he's the right man to unite u.s. troops, even as democrats accused him of denigrating female soldiers and trying to divide the military along

political lines. hegseth had spent weeks meeting with almost all republican lawmakers to reassure them that allegations linked to his personal and professional past shouldn't be disqualifying. at one point acknowledging to senators he is, quote, not a perfect person, but it was his views of women in the military that clearly struck a nerve with many senators, particularly women who are on that armed services committee. >> i have many concerns about your record and particularly your public statements, because they are so hurtful to the men and women who are currently serving in the u.s. military. harmful to morale. harmful to good order and discipline. >> quoting you from the podcast. women shouldn't be in combat at all. where is the reference to standards that they should be there if they can carry, if they can run? i don't see that at

all. >> mr. hegseth, what do you have to say to the almost 400,000 women who are serving today about your position on whether they should be capable to rise through the highest ranks of our military? >> senator, i would say i would be honored to have the opportunity to serve alongside you, shoulder to shoulder, men and women, black, white, all backgrounds with a shared purpose. our differences are not what define us. our unity and our shared purpose is what defines us. >> and it was this exchange with democratic senator tim kaine that laid bare the concerns some have with hegseth personal past, not just allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies, but questions about whether he had issues with alcohol and extramarital affairs, and whether that speaks to a larger issue about his character and judgment. >> many of your work colleagues have said that you show up for work under the influence of alcohol or drunk. i know you've denied that, but you would agree with me, right? that if that was

the case, that would be disqualifying for somebody to be secretary of defense. >> senator, those are all anonymous false claims. and the totality, they're not they're not anonymous letters on the record here. they're not anonymous on the record. we've seen records with names attached to them. >> you've admitted that it was consensual and you were still married and you just had a child by another woman. again, how do you explain your completely false charges against me? >> you know, i investigated, and i was completely clear. >> you have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two, after you just had fathered a child by wife three you've admitted that. >> i want to bring in nbc senior white house correspondent garrett hake on capitol hill. also with me, retired army four star general barry mccaffrey, who's also an msnbc military analyst, former democratic senator of missouri claire mccaskill and msnbc political analyst. and elise jordan, former white house and state department aide under president george w bush. she is also an msnbc political analyst and is working on a book about women serving in overseas combat zones

during world war two. lots to get to. garrett, let me do the big picture first. what stood out to you so far? obviously, an extraordinarily high stakes hearing today. did we hear anything that would change the minds of any of those senators who may have been on the fence? >> the request specifically? yeah. >> and, chris, with apologies, i'm standing just outside the door through which we think pete hegseth will exit in a few minutes. so if i've got my head on a swivel here a little bit, that's why you played that tim kaine exchange, which to me really was the pivotal exchange in this hearing. and it came, i believe, 11 senators in more than an hour into this hearing before i think democrats finally got their arms around how to go after pete hegseth, or how to at least try to expose some of the issues about his personal conduct and his background. that would be the things that would make republicans and republican senators uncomfortable enough with him not to vote for him, because at the end of the day, that is really the audience. if democrats think that they can prevent pete hegseth from becoming secretary of defense, they have to do it by convincing

republican senators not to support him. and i think it's those personnel qualifications, characteristics, things in his past that are far more likely to be damaging to him than his policy positions, with which most republicans largely agree. mark kelly took another bite at the apple later in the hearing, i think was similarly effective. take a listen to this moment. >> a memorial day 2014 at a cva event in virginia. you needed to be carried out of the event for being intoxicated. >> senator. >> anonymous smears. just true or false? very simple. summer of 2014. in cleveland. drunk in public with the cva team. >> anonymous smears. >> i'm just asking for true or false questions. true or false answers. an event in north carolina drunk in front of three young female staff members. after you had instituted a no alcohol policy and then reversed it. true or false? >> anonymous smears back and forth.

>> except he brought up. >> so obviously he sat there refusing to engage with the structure of mark kelly's questions. but it is those questions that i think could leave a bad taste in the mouth of some republican lawmakers. but if you're looking for a cue from this hearing, look no further than joni ernst, who had been publicly skeptical of pete hegseth before this hearing, had two private meetings with him. her questions were largely friendly, and she introduced into the record a letter supportive of hegseth. if she's a no vote on him, whenever this nomination gets to the floor, she certainly disguised it. well, chris. >> all right. if you're able to get pete hegseth, we'll come back to you. thank you for that, senator. look, you've been through hearings before, so look beyond the politics of this. there's a huge, as i said, the stakes in this are huge to head the defense department. but if you're one of those senators who has indicated or may have been on the fence. joni ernst obviously was an obvious one. people were looking to see how she would do because of the accusations of sexual misconduct

and his statements on women in the military. but if you're wondering how your constituents are viewing this, did pete hegseth help or hurt? himself? >> well, i mean, i think we have to acknowledge he's a good communicator. that's what he does for a living. that's frankly what his career has really been focused on for most of the last decade is public communication and so on. that score, i think he did a good job. but there's a couple of things that really matter here. the first is let's just for a minute do a thought exercise. imagine if somebody with this profile, a history of problems running small organizations, no background running large organizations, someone who has said incendiary things about women and others in public repeatedly. someone who has a history of people speaking out with names associated, by the way, about public drunkenness, someone who clearly has been

accused of serious misbehavior when his lawyer even admitted he was inebriated but it was consensual. does anybody think a republican would vote for that profile if it was nominated by a democrat? there wouldn't be a single vote for pete hegseth if this was a nominee to be secretary of defense by a democratic president. the other thing i want to point out at the very beginning is a very depressing fact, chris, and that is the armed services committee that i served on for 12 years was an oasis of bipartisanship. it was a place where republicans and democrats, when we do votes on markups, you would it wouldn't be by party, almost never by party. it would be by issue. it would be by how you viewed a certain program or a certain weapons system. it would never be by party. this person, for the very first time in the history of the armed services committee, refused to meet with democratic senators before the

nomination confirmation hearing. that's just mind boggling. the democrats didn't get the fbi report. they weren't allowed to see it. they weren't allowed to get any of the other forensic information. the only person who got to see any of this was the chairman of the committee. that's never happened before. they are asking for this to be a partizan military, by the way. they've conducted this confirmation process and that is very depressing. >> well, let's talk about the view that he expressed, general, if i can, about the military as it stands today, some of the things that pete hegseth said is that he wants to clean up the mess that is the pentagon right now. he wants to figure out how we bring pride back to wearing the uniform, the implication being that the members of the military now are not proud to wear the uniform he wants patriotic, patriotic, pro-america leadership again, the implication being that right now, the people who are in

charge of the pentagon are neither patriotic nor pro-american, and an awful lot of attacks, both by pete hegseth and republican members of the committee on what they call both woke ideology and woke training. dye got a lot of attention today. i wonder how you see the view that we heard today from republicans, and more to the point from pete hegseth about the us military right now. >> well, look, i think the single most important statement about this nominee's sort of troubled past came in the opening statement by senator jack reed, the military veteran himself been around a long time, very reasonable, very objective. >> and it surfaced all the reasons why you could or should vote against this nomination. and it's a provocative nomination, by the way, not half as provocative as the incoming commander in chief. and having said that, look, this guy is

princeton educated. he's smart, he's articulate. he does know a ton about national security issues as a commentator on tv. and he conducted himself very well in this four hour plus hearing, i think, to the point where all he needed was to lose one republican senator and it would be killed in committee. and i think a lot of republican senators probably hope that would happen. it didn't happen. this guy is going to get confirmed. and i think it was a very divisive, bitter, you know, he's walking away from his background and women in the armed forces, they're 15% of the armed forces. a thousand have been killed and wounded in combat. he knows he has to walk away from that. and he doesn't have a very good accounting on alcohol abuse. we cannot have a secretary of defense that has an alcohol problem at 2:00 in the morning. so mixed results. but i think this guy is going to get

confirmed. >> well, that brings me back. if i can go to garrett haake because i understand you just talked to mark kelly. i don't know if you had a chance to talk to him about whether or not he thinks that now pete hegseth will get confirmed, but tell me about the conversation you just had. >> what does that mean? yeah, chris, i just had a chance to speak with the senator. he's doing another interview over my shoulder, which i will be collegial and not interrupt. but basically, he told me he was unsatisfied with those answers to what he thought were pretty straightforward questions about hegseth background and about his personal conduct. and he thought it was important to basically get him on the record about these things and even ask, if you were under oath, would you be giving the same answers? notably, this is not a committee that swears in its witnesses, and he told me he hopes that members of the republican side were watching this hearing because it's been widely discussed, widely reported that there were concerns among republicans, at least leading up to this, the processing of this nomination about hegseth character and that those shouldn't be swept under the rug just because of the political concerns of the moment. chris. >> all right. we'll keep our ear

to you, because i know that there are people coming and going out of that committee room. thank you for that, elise hegseth was questioned very specifically multiple times about his drinking, including by democratic senator mazie hirono. here's part of that exchange. >> will you resign as secretary of defense if you drink on the job, which is a 24 over seven position? >> i've made this commitment on behalf of. >> will you resign as secretary of defense? >> i've made this commitment on behalf of the men and women i'm serving. i'm not because it's the most important deployment. >> not hearing an answer to my questions. >> do you think that he did adequately answer questions about his past behavior? what's your takeaway from those questions about character? frankly, that's what they are. they're questions of character. to lead the us military. chris i'm all for redemption narrative. >> i'm all for people. human

beings can be complex. they can do things and they can end up better on the other side. i don't know that i'm buying it at all here, given just the very short window. if he has had these substance abuse issues, how long ago was it? these are the kind of things that the fbi hopefully probed into, as they would any applicant to a high level of security clearance within the us government. and we really did not get any answers on that. on his patterns of abuse and on when and if he stopped abusing alcohol. >> you know, senator, people do want to be objective if they want to watch these hearings and learn something, and certainly feel free to answer the question about whether you think they actually learned anything. but there's a couple of things. one is, several democrats asked again, apparently there had been discussions before about having another round of questions that was denied by the republican chairman. and also what what was just brought up th