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President-elect Donald Trump's embattled Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth sure knows how to fight.
It's right there in his bio: Combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Two Bronze Stars.
As of Friday, after a round of meetings with Republican Senators who will vote on his confirmation, it seems like he's winning.
Trump posted on Truth Social: 'Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe…'
The mainstream media coverage isn't quite as glowing.
Hegseth 'fends off allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement,' whined an ABC News reporter on Friday.
I'm not the only one getting a strong whiff of déjà vu.
During the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 confirmation fight, there was an avalanche of claims against the judge ranging from the petty (teenage alcohol abuse) to the initially plausible (sex assault) to the provably false (a gang rape smear)
Senate Democrats, including Kamala Harris, lionized Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, as a brave #MeToo survivor. Then a scratching of the surface revealed serious flaws in Ford's story.
But before the truth could catch up with the salacious testimony, the hysterical pressure on then-President Trump to pull Kavanaugh's nomination mounted.
Trump could have folded, cut Kavanaugh loose and moved on. Thankfully, he didn't.
Now, once again, those same loathsome tactics cannot be allowed to prevail in a fight of this magnitude. For make no mistake: the campaign to destroy Pete Hegseth is just one facet of a concerted plot to sabotage the incoming Trump administration.
And just like it was with Kavanaugh six years ago, the attacks on Hegseth are being defeated one by one.
His critics first alleged that a tattoo on his chest is suggestive of closeted white nationalist sympathies. Baloney: the 'Jerusalem Cross' is an anodyne Christian symbol that's on display in the Archdiocese of Washington DC.
Perhaps damning – and eerily familiar – is an allegation that Hegseth raped a woman at a political conference in 2017.
The accuser told police that Hegseth forced himself on her in his hotel room after a night of partying. Hegseth says the sex was consensual – though he deeply regrets it.
The woman's police report claims are being repeated ad nauseum in the media, but the fact that law enforcement investigated and declined to press charges is not.
Nor is it stressed often enough that the accuser suggested to cops that she was drugged by Hegseth, yet her husband told investigators that she didn't appear to be impaired when he saw her shortly after the encounter.
Then the New Yorker Magazine reported that Hegseth was forced out of past leadership positions at two nonprofit veterans advocacy groups for financial mismanagement and unprofessionalism.
Hegseth credibly denies it all. His successor at Concerned Veterans For America (CVA), a vets' charity, says that, when Hegseth left CVA in 2014 to join Fox News Channel, he did so on good terms.
Next came more excessive drinking allegations.
When ten current and former Fox News employees alleged Hegseth was frequently hungover or drinking on the job, none of them went on the record. On the contrary, more than ten other of Hegseth's Fox News colleagues refuted those claims – publicly.
Indeed, after returning from his third deployment overseas in 2014, Hegseth – by his own admission – confronted personal demons. He had divorces and extramarital affairs.
But, by all accounts, he is now a committed churchgoer and in a stable marriage. Up until Trump nominated him, the two-time Ivy League alum was leading a successful career in television journalism.
In some ways, his is a commendable American redemption story, the kind the left would have celebrated… if it happened to someone on their team.
This comeback tale is inconvenient to powerful interests, like Beltway defense contractors and DC swamp creatures, who'd all like to see more malleable men running the Pentagon.
But this is the fight that Donald Trump was elected to wage – the grueling slog against an entrenched status quo.
Days after the election, prominent Democrats openly discussed ways to hamstring the administration.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal proposed a raft of executive orders President Joe Biden could decree to 'protect existing structures' and shield career bureaucrats and Justice Department officials.
This week, after our current norms-busting president pardoned his son, we learned that senior White House aides are pushing for mass preemptive pardons to be given to a slew of officials, including former chief medical adviser to the president Anthony Fauci and California Senator-elect Adam Schiff.
These moves are not totally unprecedented. President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter granted leniency to Vietnam War draft dodgers and Abraham Lincoln absolved ex-Confederate soldiers for their treason.
These were all people who undoubtedly committed crimes. So what have Fauci and Schiff done?
Leading blue-state governors are also openly plotting.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom is leading a special legislative session with the aim to 'Trump-proof' his state by raising a $25 million legal fund to stymie federal initiatives he finds objectionable – like the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants.
Hours after the 2024 election, New Jersey's Phil Murphy pledged to 'fight to the death'. Governor JB Pritzker in Illinois ominously warned Trump: 'You come for my people, you come through me.' Humiliated but never humbled, Kamala herself has pledged to 'stay in the fight'.
And this is all cheered on by a compliant mainstream media, more than happy to tout the claims of anonymous accusers when it suits, and willing to ignore allegations when they're inconvenient.
The battle to confirm Pete Hegseth will be just one in a long, long war.
Josh Hammer is the syndicated host of 'The Josh Hammer Show' and senior editor-at-large at Newsweek.
