Kenneth P. Vogel & Kate Kelly | The New York Times
As Pete Hegseth prepares for confirmation hearings, a coalition of outside groups is pressuring Republican senators to confirm him as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s secretary of defense — or face daunting political fallout it they do not.
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This time around, backers of Mr. Trump and his agenda are “pretty coordinated,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump White House adviser whose podcast, “War Room,” has talked up Mr. Hegseth and other cabinet picks.
“We know that one of the mistakes from the first time around was that we didn’t really have any outside groups, and the ones that were around weren’t really on board with the Trump agenda,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview. “This time, it’s more sophisticated, it’s got more money, it’s got a whole media and influencer ecosystem, and it started earlier, because a lot of it came out of the campaign.”
Outside groups are promoting Mr. Hegseth in myriad ways.
Officials from a conservative advocacy group called Article III Project have appeared on television and on podcasts, including Mr. Bannon’s, to encourage listeners to use their website to contact senators in support of Mr. Hegseth. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and a linked advocacy group, are spending $1 million on ads and other efforts supporting the potential defense secretary and other Trump nominees.
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“Our job is to represent the grass-roots MAGA movement and help Republican senators find and keep their backbones,” said Mike Davis, the founder and president of Article III Project and a former chief counsel for nominations to the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Kavanaugh confirmation.
In November, Mr. Davis wrote on X of Mr. Trump’s past legal and political opponents that he wanted “to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”
The groups bolstering Mr. Hegseth and other cabinet picks are deeper-pocketed and better connected to the president-elect than last time around.
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Article III Project officials say Republican senators are pleading with them to make the phones stop ringing after an initiative in support of Mr. Hegseth that generated nearly 31,000 calls, emails and social-media posts. (Similar efforts for Mr. Patel and Ms. Gabbard have also yielded thousands of incoming messages.)
Mr. Bannon believes the current grass-roots advocacy is only the beginning.
The push for Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation is “a test run for other times that we’re going to have to get people into the streets and into the halls of Congress,” he said.
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