President-elect Donald Trump mentioned Friday that he’s been listening to rave evaluations from senators about Protection Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth and is assured he will likely be confirmed.
“It looks like Pete is doing well now,” Trump informed “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, in a clip from her interview with the president-elect that can air Sunday.
“I mean, people were a little bit concerned,” Trump continued. “He’s a young guy, with a tremendous track record actually. He went to Princeton and went to Harvard. He was a good student at both. But he loves the military and I think people are starting to see it so we’ll be working on his nomination along with a lot of others.”
Hegseth, 44, has spent the final week on the Capitol drumming up assist for his nomination amid allegations of previous alcohol abuse, sexual impropriety and monetary mismanagement.
4 “no” votes from Republican senators may sink his affirmation however GOP sources have informed The Put up behind closed doorways “zero” senators had been against having the previous Fox Information persona and Military veteran lead the Pentagon.
“Yes I do, I really do,” Trump responded, when requested by Welker if he nonetheless had confidence in Hegseth.
“He’s a very smart guy,” he added. “I’ve known him through Fox, but I’ve known him for a long time. And he’s basically a military guy. Every time I talk to him, all he wants to talk about is the military. He’s a military guy.”
“A lot of senators call me up saying he’s fantastic,” Trump famous.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who on Thursday instructed that she wasn’t fairly but a “yes” on Hegseth, met with the nominee on Friday and plans to proceed the dialog subsequent week.
“I just had another substantive conversation with Senator Ernst,” Hegseth wrote on X. “I appreciate her sincere commitment to defense policy, and I look forward to meeting with her again next week.”
On the assembly, Ernst tweeted, “At a minimum, we agree that he deserves the opportunity to lay out his vision for our warfighters at a fair hearing.”
Earlier this week, Hegseth slammed the onslaught of anonymously sourced media studies which have imperiled his affirmation.
“It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown,” he wrote in a Wall Road Journal op-ed.
Will Cain, one among Hegseth’s former co-hosts at “Fox & Friends Weekend,” got here to his ex-colleague’s protection Friday after the Washington Put up downplayed the importance of Hegseth’s two Bronze Stars.
“Was just hanging out in [Hegseth’s] office (with his permission) and found this. Is this cool? I don’t know can someone ask [the Washington Post]?” Cain wrote in a tweet which included a photograph of an Military Commendation Medal awarded to Hegseth in 2005.
The quotation on the commendation famous that Hegseth’s “leadership and initiative directly resulted in the capture of two high value targets with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and effectively marked the end of an insurgent mortar cell.”
