Senate GOP sees Hegseth nomination as likely doomed

Pete Hegseth’s nomination to serve as secretary of Defense appears doomed despite his fiery declaration that he’s “not going anywhere,” Republicans on Capitol Hill told The Hill on Thursday.

“I think most people do not expect Hegseth to make it,” said one Republican senator. “There’s seven or eight [Republican] votes against him. It’s a matter of time."

“It’s on the death watch,” the senator added.

GOP senators say that President-elect Trump is letting Hegseth twist in the wind and even appeared to undermine his nomination by floating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as a possible replacement nominee to head the Pentagon.

Republican senators say that Trump isn’t making calls to GOP senators to save Hegseth’s floundering nomination and instead is throwing more ballast onto a sinking ship by floating DeSantis as a replacement.

DeSantis, a Navy judge advocate general who is a member of the U.S. Navy Reserve, would easily win confirmation, the GOP source said.

“Where is all of this stuff about DeSantis coming from? That’s all coming out of Mar-a-Lago,” the first GOP senator who spoke to The Hill said.

A second Republican senator said that Trump floated DeSantis’s name for the secretary of Defense to a group of people over the weekend.

A third Republican senator said Hegseth’s nomination is “trending” in the wrong direction.

A Senate Republican aide said as many as eight Republican senators are prepared to vote against Hegseth, but most of them are not willing to call publicly for Hegseth to resign because they don’t want to be criticized by Trump’s MAGA allies.

Hegseth can only afford three Republican “no” votes in next year’s 53-seat Senate Republican majority and still be confirmed, assuming all Democrats vote against him.

Conservative activists are already threatening on the social platform X to primary “RINOs” — short for "Republicans in name only" — who oppose Hegseth. But it is far from clear there will ever be a vote on the nomination.

Hegseth met Thursday with Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) along with Sen.-elect Jim Banks (R-Ind.) to shore up support within the GOP conference.

But Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a key member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Thursday declined to express support for Hegseth when asked during an interview on Fox News’s “America's Newsroom.”

Ernst told co-anchor Bill Hemmer that she’s not ready to support Hegseth and wants to thoroughly review his background and allegations of misconduct before making a decision.

Pressed by Hemmer, who observed that she hasn’t “gotten to a yes,” Ernst replied: “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,” she said.

Ernst, a survivor of sexual assault, has made cracking down on sexual assault in the military a top priority. She co-sponsored legislation in 2021 to move decisions over whether to prosecute allegations of sexual assault outside the chain of command to independent military prosecutors.

That makes Hegseth’s nomination potentially problematic for her given that he was accused of sexually assaulting a 30-year-old staff member at a Republican women’s conference in 2017.

Hegseth, who vigorously denies any wrongdoing, says the 2017 encounter was consensual. The local district attorney did not file a charge against him, citing a lack of sufficient evidence.

Another bombshell dropped Sunday when The New Yorker magazine reported on a whistleblower report on Hegseth’s time as president of Concerned Veterans of America (CVA) from 2013 to 2016 that described him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in an official capacity.

Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that his relationship with alcohol is a matter of serious concern to GOP senators by pledging Wednesday in meetings on Capitol Hill that he would stop drinking if confirmed to serve as Defense secretary.

The New Yorker report also claimed that Hegseth sexually pursued female staffers at the organization.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity said that the allegations “don’t count” unless Hegseth’s accusers come forward publicly, giving the embattled nominee some breathing room.

“I’m not going to make any decision based on an anonymous source. If you’re not willing to raise your hand and make the accusation, it doesn’t count,” Graham said.

But Graham also warned that “if people do raise their right hand and claim something bad happened, I will listen to them,” indicating he would take seriously any testimony Hegseth’s accusers would be willing to give before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Incoming Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told reporters Thursday that Hegseth will undergo an FBI background check.

“He’s as a matter of fact eager for it,” Wicker said of the background check.

Hegseth has adamantly denied the sexual assault charge as well as the allegations in the whistleblower report from his time at CVA that he was frequently drunk while on duty.

That could make the FBI’s investigation of Hegseth’s background crucial, especially if the individuals who have accused him of misconduct decline to testify before the Senate.

The woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of a financial settlement that Hegseth paid to her.

Scott, the Florida senator, told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a recent interview that Hegseth should “absolutely not” release that person from the nondisclosure agreement.

“We know how many people sign nondisclosures just to eliminate something, not that they ever did anything wrong, and he was never, he was never, you know, never charged with anything,” Scott said. 

Rounds, who met with Hegseth on Thursday morning, told the nominee that he will need to speak out at length publicly in response to the allegations facing him.

“I asked him to be in a position to respond publicly to the allegations that have been made,” he said. “While it’s difficult and it’s uncomfortable, it’s a necessary part of this process.”

Rounds said Hegseth needs to respond publicly to each allegation.

Hegseth has responded broadly to the allegations by claiming he is the victim of a “manufactured media takedown.”

“The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down. It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.