Kimmel on Pete Hegseth: Allegations of Sexual Misconduct and Excessive Drinking Are ‘Qualities’ Trump Looks for in Nominees

KIMMEL: “The main event in Washington today was the confirmation hearing of Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, former weekend ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host Pete Hegseth. The hearing started at 9:30 this morning, or, as Pete calls it, happy hour. Hegseth was hammered by Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee who argued that he should be disqualified based on accounts of excessive drinking, allegations of sexual misconduct, which are two of the qualities Trump looks for in a nominee. Hegseth says it’s all made up to discredit him, and that includes this line of questions from Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.”

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KAINE: “One of your colleagues said that you got drunk at an event, at a bar, and chanted ‘Kill all Muslims.’ Another colleague, not anonymous, we have this, said that you took coworkers to a strip club, you were drunk, you tried to dance with strippers, you had to be held off the stage. And one of your employees in that event filed a sexual harassment charge as a result of it. (...) You claim that this was all anonymous. We have seen records with names attached to all of these, including the name of your own mother.”
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KIMMEL: “Wait, his mother was at the strip club? This guy, Pete Hegseth, among his many disqualifying attributes was reportedly he was forced out of two different veteran nonprofit groups after allegations of sexual impropriety, personal misconduct, and financial mismanagement. In other words, just the dude you want in charge of an $800 billion budget and the security of the free world. But these Republican senators are so scared of Donald Trump, they’ve been circle-jerking the wagons around him, None more so than Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who did not do much to help head off the stereotype about people named ‘Markwayne.’”