January 14, 2025
That was a clip from the today’s Senate confirmation hearing of Pete Hegseth… President-elect Trump’s cabinet pick to be secretary of defense.
A lot of yelling. I know. But I want you to understand the process before you get fired up about the political show.
In that clip Hegseth was being grilled by Senator Tammy Duckworth a democrat from Illinois. In case you didn’t know her, she is also an Iraq war veteran and purple heart recipient who lost her legs and partial use of her right arm after the helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents. She was grilling Hegseth about whether he has the skills to audit the pentagon budget which is almost a trillion dollars. Because – fact—the Pentagon has not been able to pass an audit for years. Which is clearly a problem.
Now – I show you that clip – not because I am trying to call out Senator Duckworth or Pete Hegseth. I show you that clip because I want you to understand that these confirmation hearings get heated. Not all of them – but lots of them. This is not uncommon. When the nominees are republicans, the democrats on the “committee doing the questioning” grill them and the republicans give the nominee softball questions. And then when the nominees are democrats the roles reverse and republicans on the committee are the ones doing the grilling and democrats ask the softballs.
None of this should be a surprise to you. And I want you to understand that we are going to see this process repeated over and over for most of Trump’s cabinet nominees. Especially the ones that are controversial. So brace yourself for a lot of yelling. Sometimes the senators do it because they’re passionate about an issue and sometimes they do it to get airtime on tv.
But getting past all the yelling and the political theater– the real question is – will those nominees be confirmed by the Senate? I don’t predict the future – but I sure can explain the process.
Let’s take Hegseth as an example. The president elect nominated him to be the next secretary of defense. According to the United States constitution the senate has to confirm that cabinet position. So, the senate armed services committee which is responsible for oversight of the entire defense department will be in charge of handling that nominee. That means members of the senate armed services committee hold private meetings with the nominee, conduct background checks and ethics reviews and then ultimately schedule a hearing….like the one you saw today.
Once the hearings are over the members on that committee vote to either advance the nomination or scrap the nomination. Because republicans control the Senate – they are also a majority on these committees. All it takes is a simple majority of the committee to advance a nomination. So, there’s a good chance that Trump’s nominees – if they get to this stage, will advance.
Then the full Senate takes a vote on the cabinet nominee – which – again – only needs a simple majority. And since republicans have 53 members in the Senate – if the nominee gets to this point that nominee will likely be confirmed.
