Sen. Tammy Duckworth voted for both of Donald Trump’s former secretaries of defense, Mark Esper and James Mattis. A combat veteran herself, who lost both her legs in 2004 from a rocket-propelled grenade while flying in Iraq, she’s been able to find common ground with Republicans on military issues and matters of national security.
When it comes to Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for the job this time around, however, Duckworth is a hard no.
“Let me just say the American people need a SecDef. who’s ready to lead on Day One. You are not that person,” she said at his confirmation hearing. NOTUS sat down with Duckworth after the hearing to talk through the questions she still has about his qualifications. She described a confirmation process that had veered too far into partisan politics, from the questions asked at the hearing to the FBI vetting process.
“If this was a Democratic president with a candidate similarly underqualified and with serious allegations against him … do you think any of my Republican colleagues would put up with it?” she said. “No!”
Here’s a transcript of NOTUS’ conversation, edited for style and clarity.
NOTUS: Hegseth repeatedly brought up an idea that standards were being lowered in the military to meet “quotas” of women and people of color in combat roles. Where do you think this concept of “quotas” and the backlash around physical fitness standards for women in combat arms is coming from?
Tammy Duckworth: It’s coming from a place where they want to distract us from the fact that Pete Hegseth cannot meet the standards to be secretary of defense.
That whole hearing the other day, we wasted so much time with Republicans feeding him lines and having conversations with him about whether or not we’re lowering standards so that women can serve in combat, when really what that whole hearing was about was U.S. lowering the standards for secretary of defense.He is the least qualified person to be secretary of defense in our nation’s history, that as far as I can tell, at least in modern history. The irony of him saying he wanted to have the highest standards for anybody in the military to do their jobs at the very same time that he says, “Oh, I want to hire people smarter than me to do the job for secretary of defense.”
You mentioned Republicans making a lot of the argument for Hegseth. Do you feel like there’s a breakdown of bipartisanship on the committee? It seems like this is one of the first times there’s not really going to be that bipartisan crossover for a secretary of defense.
I think that’s pretty clear, especially when they can see that he is not qualified for the job.
If this was a Democratic president with a candidate similarly underqualified and with serious allegations against him — who had paid off somebody and stuck an NDA on them so that he could keep his last job — do you think any of my Republican colleagues would put up with it? No!
You brought up the allegations against Hegseth. Do you want to see some of these folks be released from their NDAs, be able to come forward and be more public about their claims against him?
Yes, and he was asked if he would release him from the NDAs, and he wouldn’t answer the question.
I want to clear up one thing about the FBI background investigation. The American public thinks that the FBI background investigation is something that is requested in a bipartisan way from the committee or from the Senate. It’s not.
The FBI background investigation, whether it was for Brett Kavanaugh or for Pete Hegseth, is actually requested by the Trump administration. And they tell the FBI who to talk to and, more importantly, who not to talk to.
They don’t want to have an Anita Hill moment, dragged before Congress on camera, because many of them have very young children, and they fear for their personal safety from the MAGA extremists. They want to talk to the FBI or some sort of vetting mechanism, but the FBI has been told these are not the people you need to talk to.
There was some discussion of the FBI background check for Hegseth being inadequate, and that investigators didn’t talk to some of the subjects of the allegations against him.
Was Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed able to share any information from the background check? Has the FBI background check started to lose its purpose in the confirmation process?
Very much so. And even what they talked to — with as incomplete as it is — I’m still not even allowed to see it. The chairman has not allowed him to share with the rest of the committee what’s in that report.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.