The Defense Department this week renamed a military base in Charleston, South Carolina, for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke at a ceremony to honor the occasion. This should not have been an especially challenging task for the Pentagon chief.
All he had to do was travel to South Carolina, say some nice things about the longtime senator and former Air Force judge advocate general, and fly home.
But Hegseth apparently felt compelled to add some unrelated thoughts, condemning “a radical leftist ideology” that he believes has “run rampant in the media, in academia and even among a few members of Congress.” At a ceremony ostensibly intended to honor Graham, the defense secretary proceeded to condemn “the hard left” for having “declared war on our own military,” then the “radical woke ideology,” all before expressing concerns about the evils of “communism.”
When describing Hegseth, all kinds of unflattering words and phrases come to mind, but at his core, the former Fox News host is relentlessly partisan — and not just at military ceremonies. Politico reported:
The Pentagon is shutting congressional Democrats out of classified briefings — and even Republicans are shocked by the brazen partisanship.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth trekked to Capitol Hill at least twice in recent weeks to make closed-door pitches for his record $1.5 trillion defense budget. But lawmakers in both parties say he followed an increasingly familiar pattern of excluding Democrats.
There were no legal, political or procedural reasons for the Pentagon chief to offer exclusive classified briefings to members of one party. Hegseth apparently simply chose to do this because he wanted to.
Part of the problem with this is that he’s making a tactical mistake: The administration is seeking an extraordinary increase to the nation’s defense budget, and to get it through Congress, the spending bills will likely need Democratic support. The more the secretary deliberately alienates members of the Senate minority, the less inclined they’ll be to throw an additional half-trillion dollars in his direction.
But putting aside tactical considerations, an even more foundational problem comes into view: As Donald Trump positions himself as the president of red states, Hegseth often seems intent not on serving as the nation’s defense secretary, but on serving as the Republican Party’s defense secretary.
Some of his GOP allies seem uncomfortable with this. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota told Politico that he’s told defense officials that it’s a mistake to exclude members of the minority party from military intelligence briefings. “The Democrat [sic] members need to be brought up to speed,” Rounds said.
What’s more, the problem isn’t limited to intelligence sharing. Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told Politico, “Not only are they excluding Democrats from classified briefings, they’re also not having the kind of routine briefings with committee staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that have been the hallmark since I got here 18 years ago.”
Time will tell what happens in the midterm elections in 12 weeks, but if Democrats are able to win back a majority in the Senate, Hegseth may come to regret the fact that he’s spent his tenure to date embracing a hyperpartisan approach to congressional oversight.
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