The Cabinet of Dr. Trumpigali

 

Jeffrey St. Clair >> 

+ A Middle East History Moment with Pete Hegseth: “Open up your Bible. God granted Abraham this land.  The twelve tribes of Israel established a constitutional monarchy in 1000 BC. King David was their second king and established Jerusalem as the capital. Jews were fighting foreign occupiers for centuries, ultimately maintaining a presence there. And right now, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, are trying to erase the Jewish ties to Jerusalem, as we speak. I’ve been there multiple times. They’re trying to make it look like Jews were never there. The most important aspect of this is the international community granted sovereignty to the Jews, to the Jewish state, after World War II, and Israel has had to fight defensive war after defensive war, with every country coming to crush it, ever since then just to exist.”

+ Of course, this was almost precisely the position Bill Clinton took when he scolded Arab-American voters in Michigan for being hesitant to vote for Harris.

+ More Hegseth: “Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today.”

+ Back in 2019, Hegseth bragged on FoxNews about never washing his hands and claimed he couldn’t remember washing them once in the past 10 years.

+ Hegseth wants women on KP duty, not in combat: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”

+ Sen. Tammy Duckworth responding to Pete Hegseth saying women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in combat: “I would ask him, ‘Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight?’ I’m pretty sure I was in combat when that happened.”

+ Using his direct pipeline to Trump as a FoxNews contributor, Hegseth convinced Trump to pardon three service members convicted or accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including Eddie “the Blade” Gallagher.

+ From 2012 to 2015, Pete Hegseth was CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, an NGP funded by the Koch brothers’ network, whose top priority was privatizing Veterans Administration health care. Hegseth’s leadership of the organization came under scrutiny after he hired his brother at an annual salary of $69,497.

+ A social conservative, Hegseth’s two marriages ended in divorce after extra-marital affairs, one with a staffer and another with a FoxNews producer who later bore his child.

+ Vanity Fair reported that on Thursday, the Trump transition team held an emergency meeting over newly surfaced allegations of sexual misconduct by Pete Hegseth involving a woman he had what is described as an “inappropriate” encounter with in Monterey, California, in 2017. Hegseth apparently told the transition team that the relationship was consensual and had been investigated by the Monterey police, who declined to file charges. A case “he said, she said,” according to Hegseth, which is hardly the most exculpatory denial. Say this much, Trump hasn’t picked a team of incel fanboys.

+ NBC News’ Elise Jordan put together a timeline of the latest allegation against Hegseth. (A point of clarification: Hegesth’s second wife was previously his mistress, who he’d had an affair with during his first marriage.)

+ Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America: “Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history. And the most overtly political. Brace yourself, America.”