The Daily - Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Warning: this episode contains strong language.Over the past few weeks, the resistance of a single Republican senator, Joni Ernst of Iowa, had threatened to derail Donald J. Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense.Karoun Demirjian, who covers Congress for The Times, and Jonathan Swan, who covers politics, discuss how Mr. Trump and his allies ensured that Ms. Ernst’s resistance went away.Guest: Karoun Demirjian, who covers Congress for The New York Times, with a focus on national security.Jonathan Swan, a Times reporter covering politics and Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.Background reading: Mr. Trump became convinced that letting Mr. Hegseth fail would set off a feeding frenzy among senators.Ms. Ernst, who is facing re-election in 2026, appeared less skeptical about the pick after MAGA supporters threatened her with political retribution.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. Over the past few weeks, the resistance of a single Republican senator has threatened to derail Donald Trump's controversial choice of Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense. Today, Karan Demirjian and Jonathan Swan, with the story of how Trump and his allies ensured that that Senator's resistance quickly went away. It's Monday, December 16th.

Karan, in your role as a congressional reporter, you have been closely tracking the fate of Trump's pick to run the U.S. military, Pete Hegseth, a pick that was controversial from the start, but has become only more controversial over the past couple of weeks. Right. I think everyone was pretty surprised when President-elect Trump picked a Fox News host to be his next secretary of defense. And the surprise turned into discomfort for a lot of people and shock as allegations started

coming out about these fairly sordid details from his past. First, it was an accusation that he had committed sexual assault. And then after that, it became this article for the New Yorker, which alleged that he was drinking on the job and harassing female employees and was mismanaging the veterans nonprofits that he was drinking on the job and harassing female employees and was mismanaging the veterans nonprofits that he was running. In the middle of all that, there was this email that cropped up

that his mother had written him in 2018, calling him an abuser of women and telling him what a reprehensible person he was. And so as that mountain of allegations grew, there started to be more senators, including some of Trump's allies who started to express real discomfort with having to back this guy, or at least with the fact that they were having to grapple with these allegations and calling them disturbing, calling them

troublesome. And that's a problem for Trump because even though Senate Republicans are going to take the majority in the new year, it's a very slim majority. They cannot afford to lose more than three of their own if they actually want to get these nominees confirmed. And it becomes clear that there's really one Senator who has the potential to swing things one way or another. It's a Senator whose whole brand, basically, has been built on these issues around which Hegseth

is having problems with these allegations. And that Senator is Joni Ernst of Iowa. Well, just explain that. Tell us about Senator Joni Ernst and how her career ends up so at odds with Hegseth. So when Joni Ernst runs for the Senate a decade ago, a centerpiece of her campaign is the fact that she's a combat veteran. She's one of the first generation of female combat veterans, and she's actually becomes the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate.

There have been others since, but she breaks that glass ceiling. That becomes a big part of her resume and a reason that people look to her on defense issues. A couple years later, she talks about how she was a victim of sexual assault. And this becomes this very raw disclosure that she writes about in her memoir that is discussed publicly. And she becomes a figure, again, rare in the Republican Party, that a woman would step forward and start to discuss this all very personally. Thank you, Senator Hyder, Senator Ernst.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. General Hyten, you have been nominated to be the second highest ranking military officer in the United... In 2019, she breaks with her party to oppose the nomination of John Hyten, who's up to become vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I have reviewed the evidence as well as your performance while serving as the STRATCOM commander. He's been accused by a subordinate of sexual assault and her whole party waves him through and she says, no, I'm not going to do that. The facts have left me with concerns regarding your judgment, leadership and fitness to serve

as the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two years after that, she's joining with Kirsten Gillibrand to rally support for a bill that is trying to address how sexual assault cases in the military are adjudicated. It had been in the chain of command forever, and they were trying to take it out of the chain of command so that victims wouldn't have their cases basically muzzled if it was inconvenient to their unit. And she really opens the floodgates for more Republicans to say, okay, I'm on board with this. Abuse is not something you can just simply forget.

It stays with you forever. And I know this personally. And so she basically builds this brand where people look to her in the GOP. And Democrats consider her a partner and ally for talking about these issues of women's experience in the military, for bringing to light various sexual assault issues. And then Trump picks Hegseth, who is accused of sexually assaulting and harassing women. And oh, by the way way has said publicly he doesn't believe women should serve in combat roles and Joni Ernst is a combat

veteran. So there's just a lot of tension and clashing there between her resume and what she stands for and the allegations against him and the problems that are associated with his pick. Well so given her role as a Republican leader on all of these issues, issues that do not seem to align with Hegseth's biography and these accusations that he faces. What is Ernst's response to Hegseth being tapped to run the military? Well, the day that Hegseth is announced as Trump's pick, I caught her in the hallway of the basement of the Capitol and asked her what she thought. And she said he's going to have his work cut out for him. At that point, we didn't even

know all these allegations against him. But as the allegations began to mount, she became that much more resolute of I will talk to him, but very, very clearly not saying anything nice about him. And this all leads to a whole lot of scrutiny and focus on the first in-person meeting they have. Hegseth goes to her office before I sit down and comes out and he talks to reporters, but she doesn't really say anything else except for, okay, we met. Yesterday you had a significant meeting with Pete Hegseth, our former colleague. And then she goes on Fox News the next morning. And the host kind of has to drag it out of

her but he basically after asking her about the meeting he says, Okay it doesn't sound on your answer that you've gotten to a yes. If I'm wrong about that. It doesn't sound like you got to yes yet and she says that's right. I think you are right. I think for a number of our senators they want to make sure that any allegations have been cleared. And that's why we have to have a very thorough vetting process. And that's why I was happy to sit down with Pete and have that conversation with him.

Which is a pretty big confession of uneasiness. And it just kind of confirms what everybody was sensing, which is that she's not okay with this guy. So quite understandably, this senator who has led her party on all these issues, like sexual assault, is deciding that these accusations against him might be disqualifying. And she's saying so on of all networks, Fox News, which she and everyone else in the Republican Party know that the president-elect watches so closely. Correct. And what Ernst is expressing is something that a lot of people in the GOP

are starting to feel and worry about. And aides start to whisper that, you know, this nomination might just be dead already. Because if Joni Ernst can't get to yes, how can other people cross her? She's been such a moral leader on these issues that are of concern to Hegseth. And so that's trickling up to the Trump team. And there's this general sense that if they can't get Ernst on board, then Hegseth really doesn't have a path to being confirmed. After the break, my colleague Jonathan Swan, on how Ernst's resistance triggered a Manga swarm that has

brought Hegseth back from the brink. We'll be right back. So, Jonathan, as Hegseth's path becomes messier and messier, and he's kind of just flapping in the wind there with senators like Joni Ernst saying she can't get behind him, what's happening inside Trump world? Well, Trump himself is starting to have second thoughts about Hegseth. I was actually in Palm Beach two weeks ago when this is all happening, meeting with Trump officials, talking to advisors of his. And I can't overstate to you how universal the view was in Trump's inner circle that

Hegseth was done. Donald Trump was criticizing him behind his back, saying, you know, he could have told me about all this stuff, you know, he was seeing the negative stories, he wasn't happy about them. And so Trump actually starts to think about picking a replacement for Hegseth. The ultimate sign that he's done with you. Totally. And he started to court Ron DeSantis. And we should just say that is surprising, not just because it means Trump is writing off Pete Hegseth, but because he has hated DeSantis. I mean, DeSantis ran against him.

They destroyed him in that campaign. That is a very unexpected alternative. They didn't only defeat him. It was personal, as you say, and for many people on Trump's team, it's deeply personal. Suzy Wiles, who's going to come in as Trump's chief of staff, used to work for Ron DeSantis, left on very bad terms with him. There are others on the team who used to work for him. None of them like Ron DeSantis. So as soon as Trump's advisors realize that he's actually serious about the DeSantis idea,

there is a panic. Many people go into gear of how do we kill this? At the same time, there are others in Trump's orbit, some of the same people, but different people like Steve Bannon and others, who thought that there was actually something larger at play. That if he allowed Pete Hegseth to be blocked by Senate Republicans, that would set the tone for the rest of his administration. That was the argument that they were making to Trump indirectly, in some cases directly. But basically what they were saying was, you already let one person go. Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz, right?

Trump put up Matt Gaetz for attorney general, which horrified Republicans. And within a very short period of time, it became clear that he wasn't going to have the votes and he quit. People like Steve Bannon and others in Trump's orbit thought that was a really bad message. They thought at a minimum, strategically, they should have kept Matt Gaetz in because him soaking up all the media attention and controversy actually is useful because Trump has a whole bunch of other controversial picks and they can slide through with less media attention. But also letting him quit was a bad idea in terms of setting the terms of Trump's return

to Washington, in terms of the power template, in terms of Trump saying, I'm the king around here. So what they wanted to do with Hegseth, they decided very quickly, like within 24 hours, was we're going to turn him into a cause. We're going to make him sort of a Brett Kavanaugh type figure. And we are going to make this a litmus test for Republicans defying Donald Trump. And if you dare step out of line, the mob is going to come for you.

The online mob, the pressure, the constituents, we are going to make you toxic with the Republican base. So what might have begun as a bunch of people around Trump kind of revolting against the idea of Ron DeSantis as the next Secretary of Defense morphs into this larger objection to the idea that Trump would back down again on one of his picks for the cabinet and show weakness in a way that might completely shape his presidency. Exactly. So, what does it actually look like once team Trump decides we are not going to back down and actually we're going to go on the offense here?

Well, two things happened. One, Pete Hagseth and his team decide they're going to abandon the sort of traditional Washington playbook of keeping your head down, talking to senators, but not making this a huge spectacle. Trump wanted to see a spectacle. He picked Hagseth in the first place because he liked watching him on Fox News. So Trump encouraged Hagseth to get out there. What you're seeing right now with me is the art of the smear. It is the classic art of the smear. Hegseth does these sort of defiant interviews and performances.

Take whatever tiny kernels of truth, and there are tiny, tiny ones in there, and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I am definitely not. And Pete's mother, Penelope Hegseth, joins us live on the set to tell us what she wanted to tell us. You called us yesterday and you said you wanted to come on. I did. His mother goes on Fox & Friends. I am here to tell the truth to the American people

and tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to the senators on the Hill, especially our female senators. In this highly unusual performance. I wrote that in haste. I wrote that with deep emotions. I wrote that as a parent. Where she renounces a letter she sent him in 2018, where she took him to task for his treatment of women.

I don't believe any of that is true, any of it. And I'm here, I wouldn't be sitting on this, in this chair today if I didn't believe that about my son. And then the second part is basically, you know, it's an intimidation strategy. It's we need to get our most powerful allies in terms of who has the biggest following with the Republican base, who are most effective at whipping up anger and emotion in the base, and set them onto the wavering senators. And Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa became their number one target. She was seen as the biggest problem.

So all pressure was focused on her, obviously others too, but she was the focal point. And what does it look like for Senator Ernst to be the focus of this campaign? You are in for another Tea Party revolution. We're getting tired of this shit. You had influential MAGA figures with huge audiences. I mean, these people have millions and millions of followers between them. Senator Ernst just got to understand,

I mean, you got to get with the program here. People like Steve Bannon. This is the red line. This is not, this is not a joke everybody. The funding is... The radio host Charlie Kirk. And look, I get it that senators got their various processes that they got to go through that's fine, that's all well and good, but eventually they got to get to the point where

they can say yes. And... The Breitbart reporter Matt Boyle. Senator Ernst is the big one here, Joni Ernst from Iowa. All these people, they all start going after her. You go up against Pete Hegseth, the president, repeatedly, then don't be surprised Joni Ernst also, you got a primary challenge in Iowa.

Don't be surprised. People like Kirk were threatening to recruit a primary challenger against Ernst. Remember, she's gonna be running again in in 2026 so this carries real weight. The funding has already been put together, donors are calling like crazy, primaries are going to be launched. I mean it's feral, nothing is off the table. Get on the phone and start tweeting at Joni Ernst.

They sent threatening posts on social media. They urged their listeners on their radio shows to pressure Ernst and to call her congressional office. Get on the phone. Folks, this stuff matters. And that then kicks off this whole movement and it gets really personal and close to home. You had people online scraping up information about her, ostensibly from her divorce and making it public. This is what I mean by feral. You know, Brenna Bird, who's the popular attorney general of Iowa,

she writes this opinion column in Breitbart News saying that Washington politicians are trying to obstruct Trump's administration. And she didn't mention Ernst, but her message was very clear. I mean, coming from someone of her stature in the state, that was a really big deal. And then you had the money side. America needs a defense secretary who knows what it means to fight. So you have this dark money group

that Elon Musk has used for political spending. That group starts running digital ads in Iowa. Call your senator today and urge them to confirm Pete Hexeth for Secretary of Defense. Calling on people to urge their senator to vote for Hexeth. And no prizes for guessing which Senator the ads were referring to. Right. So it's all of the above.

It's the threat of big money coming in against you, you know, with Musk and his billionaire friends. It's people in the state that have real power, Brenna Bird. And then it's the most influential figures on the right to have real followings and have the ability to activate the most intense faction within the Trump base very unpleasant It makes your life miserable if you're a sitting senator and that's what comes down on you, right? And the message that they're sending her via this onslaught from all sides

seems to be senator Ern, if you like being in the US Senate as a Republican from Iowa, if you don't want us to find someone to run against you, if you don't want your phones ringing off the hook and our Trump MAGA base turning against you, you should probably just find a way to get behind Pete Hexeth as Secretary of Defense, because then all this will probably go away. That's right. And none of these people would say this, but it's absolutely a fact that when pressure campaigns like this happen, there's the fear of some crazy supporter committing an act of violence or coming up to you and harassing you in person.

I mean, it's a factor. It's a factor in this era. So how does Ernst respond to all of this? I mean, I've seen these pressure campaigns before from Trump's movement, and this might be the fastest effect that I've ever seen. Met with Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth for a second time. Within 72 hours after this campaign really kicked off, she meets with him again and she puts out this statement and her language was unrecognizable.

Following our encouraging conversations, Pete committed to completing a full audit of the Pentagon and selecting a senior official who will uphold the roles and value of our servicemen and women. He will continue, she says, to support the roles of both servicemen and women. As I support Pete through this process.. As I support Pete through this process. And as I support Pete through this process.

So that's very different. She's now saying she's supporting him through this process. The second half of the statement was even more remarkable. I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources. I look forward to a hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources. So those last three words, those are the talking points of the Trump team. I mean, to say a hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources, you're essentially setting up two categories.

You're saying there are statements that are true, and there are statements or accusations made by anonymous sources that are therefore false. And so by doing that, given that the accusations against Pete Hegseth are from anonymous sources, you, you are invalidating on its face the accusations against Pete Hegseth. The fact that she's willing to support me through this process means a lot. And pretty quickly we saw Hegseth make some comments that indicate that he seems to believe he's got her vote. And I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don't support women in the military. Now it's worth noting in this statement Hegseth also seemed to back off

his earlier position about not supporting women in the military. Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women. And Ernst says this is based on a pledge he made to her in that second meeting. It's all a little vague, but essentially this is why she claims she's softening her position on him, that he's made concessions on issues that matter to her. And to be clear, she's still not coming right out and saying he absolutely has her vote, but she certainly seems to have reversed course and put herself in a

situation where at this point it's very hard to imagine her backing out. She would, if she did that, be a pariah with the MAGA base. They would make sure of that. And just from her actions so far, it seems pretty clear that she wants to stay on the right side of the Trump movement. So this ends up becoming a pretty extraordinary demonstration of the President-elect's power. Absolutely. And when I talk to people close to President-elect Trump and people who work for him, people on the outside,

allies, they already see this as a resounding success. You know, they will say, look, who knows, maybe more accusations will come out against Pete Hexheth, maybe we end up losing four senators and he goes down. But even if that happens, they see this as a cautionary tale for Republicans. They are putting Republicans on notice that they're not gonna tolerate dissent, they're not gonna tolerate opposition to Donald Trump

during his return to Washington. And by making such a fight of this, by publicly forcing these senators to bend the knee, they are creating a template for what we're likely to see next year. As Trump tries to pass legislation, as he inevitably does controversial things that will make some senators squeamish. The Trump team is sending out the message now, there will be a very steep cost

if you go against Donald Trump. Well, Jonathan, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. On Sunday, the Republican campaign to rally support for Pete Hegseth continued. Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, said that Hegseth has agreed to release the woman who accused him of sexual assault from a confidential legal settlement. That, Graham told NBC News, would allow his accuser to come forward publicly with her allegations and let senators evaluate whether or not they are true. He's given me his side of the story. It makes sense to me.

I believe him. Unless somebody's willing to come forward, I think he's going to get through. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to another day. Over the weekend, South Korea's legislature voted to impeach the country's leader, President Yoon Seok-yool, as punishment for his decision to impose martial law on the country. The vote, which immediately strips Yoon of his presidential powers, was met with cheers in the streets of South Korea's capital. Yoon's martial law decree, issued on December 3, lasted only six hours, but it threw South Korea's democracy into chaos and triggered massive public protests.

Yoon's fate now rests with South Korea's Constitutional Court, which will decide within the next six months whether to reinstate or formally remove him from office. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Luke Vanderplug, and Asta Chaturvedi, with help from Nina Feldman. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Devin Taylor, contains original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansferk of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Boboro. See you tomorrow.