Yes, even the “serious,” well-informed Republican senators with reputations for their commitment to national security are bending the knee to Donald Trump. Just over two months ago, when Trump announced Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, there were doubts about whether he could get confirmed in a closely divided Senate. National security and national intelligence committees traditionally have found much bipartisan agreement. Surely a number of Republicans could be expected to take the Senate’s advice and consent responsibilities seriously.
That was not to be. After a cursory hearing Tuesday no Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee rose to the occasion; all voted to send Hegseth’s nomination to the Senate floor. Tom Nichols wrote in the Atlantic:
What America and the world saw today was not a serious examination of a serious man. Instead, Republicans on the committee showed that they would rather elevate an unqualified and unfit nominee to a position of immense responsibility than cross Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or the most ardent Republican voters in their home states. America’s allies should be deeply concerned; America’s enemies, meanwhile, are almost certainly laughing in amazement at their unexpected good fortune.
Republican senator Joni Ernst, a military veteran, whose resume includes serving as a commanding officer of the 1168th Transportation Company in Kuwait during the Iraq War, and who is a sexual assault survivor, raised questions about Hegseth early on, challenging especially his view that women are unqualified to serve in combat. (That view stems from Hegseth’s celebration of hypermasculinity, which accompanies his religious conviction that women must submit to men’s authority regarding government, church, and family.)
Senator Ernst quickly learned the consequences of bucking Trump, as his transition team launched a ferocious campaign to intimidate potential witnesses and GOP senators, as reported by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker. Mayer wrote:
In December, a dark-money group previously backed by Elon Musk, Building America’s Future, also began pouring money into the fight. It spent half a million dollars on ads pressuring Ernst to support Hegseth after she voiced doubts about him. Musk and other Trump allies have made clear that they will fund primary challenges against Republican senators who oppose Trump’s nominees.
Ernst backed away from her judgment. No other Republican senator at the hearing dared to articulate criticism of Trump’s pick on any grounds whatsoever.
Meanwhile in the House of Representatives: Yesterday Speaker of the House Mike Johnson removed Mike Turner as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Turner, who has sometimes disagreed with Donald Trump — supporting U.S. aid to Ukraine and voting in 2021 to certify Biden’s election — is “well-respected on both sides of the aisle.” That, until the Trump era, was characteristic of the leaders in both chambers of Congress who oversaw national security issues.
Both parties, since the start of the Cold War, have (mostly) respected as a guiding principle “politics stops at the water’s edge.” No longer. At this early stage, this Congress is taking a cavalier approach to guarding its authority; it is abjectly ducking its Constitutional responsibilities.
We have entered an era when loyalty to Trump is the order of the day. That is the credo of the Republican leadership in Congress. Individual members of the GOP with well-informed convictions, if they will not acknowledge obeisance to Trump, are pushed aside. To avoid this fate, they must acquiesce by remaining silent.
This endemic capitulation will diminish our country’s security and leave the United States ill-prepared to address a panoply of issues with global significance.
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