Donald Trump received a stark warning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday morning about the potential fallout of pushing forward with Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Co-host Joe Scarborough emphasized that a nationally televised Senate hearing could backfire, shining an unwanted spotlight on allegations against Hegseth.
Now that Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, appears to have solidified his position by appealing to Trump’s fondness for defiance, his next challenge lies in surviving Senate scrutiny. Democrats are expected to seize the hearings as an opportunity to publicly grill Hegseth on troubling allegations, including sexual assault accusations, reports of public drunkenness, and financial mismanagement.
Scarborough laid out the grim outlook for Hegseth and Trump’s administration. “So maybe Pete Hegseth, maybe he wins a news cycle here, wins a news cycle there,” Scarborough began. “But you go to the end of this process, they don’t want Senate hearings because if they get Senate hearings with Pete Hegseth, they’re going to see testimony, certainly reports like NBC News’ report from Fox News employees of public drunkenness recently at Fox News.”
Scarborough continued detailing the potential bombshells. “They’re going to see reports of alcohol abuse when he was running two vets organizations and some pretty tawdry behavior while running those organizations… outlined in whistle-blower reports. They’re going to see financial mismanagement of vets organizations that were very strong when he started there, that ended up basically on the verge of bankruptcy and irrelevance through his stewardship.”
Perhaps the most damning, Scarborough explained, would be testimony regarding allegations of sexual assault. “We have the alleged rape,” he said. “We have the police report, we have somebody who leaked that to the New York Times and members of this woman’s family if she doesn’t testify. Other people testifying about what Pete Hegseth has done in the past.”
Scarborough concluded with a pointed warning for Trump’s team: “It is not in Donald Trump’s or the new administration’s best interest that this is splayed all over the front pages of newspapers for a week or so while he’s trying to get momentum for whatever policies he wants to push.
Again, maybe they want to put up a good fight, but at the end of the day, this is just bad news for the DOD, it’s bad news for America and the world — it’s even bad news for the incoming president.” The prediction underscores how Hegseth’s nomination could create serious hurdles for Trump’s early days in office, drawing attention away from policy goals and toward damaging headlines.