Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth warned that in addition to being radically unqualified, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, might potentially be “vulnerable to blackmail.”
During an interview on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes Tuesday, Duckworth explained why she still doesn’t believe Hegseth is suited to be the secretary of defense after his confirmation hearing earlier that day.
“If Donald Trump said to Hegseth, you know, on January 20, ‘I want you to prepare a plan to uh, you know, invade Greenland.’ Could he lead that mission? My answer is no, he’s not qualified! He wouldn’t know what was a good mission or what was a bad mission. He wouldn’t know who to put in the room to come up with the plans!” Duckworth said. Duckworth is a combat veteran who lost both her legs during a mission in Iraq.
“And you know, more importantly, I think he personally is a compromised individual whom our adversaries are watching and digging the dirt on, and this makes him somebody who is vulnerable to our adversaries, and we don’t need that person in charge.”
Duckworth went on to describe how Hegseth’s shady dealings with a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 demonstrated a huge liability to the security of the United States.
“Here’s what I’m afraid of,” Duckworth said later. “He’s already had to pay off a woman who accused him of sexual assault in order to keep his last job at Fox News, right? What is he going to be willing to do to pay off the next accuser who might show up after he becomes secretary of defense and has access to the nuclear codes, and the location of U.S. troops around the world?
“What happens when he wants to keep that job and somebody comes forward? He’s already told us that he’s willing to pay off somebody.”
Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, revealed in November that his client had paid his accuser in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement in order to stop her from filing a lawsuit and to protect his position at Fox News. Duckworth argued that Hegseth “potentially is vulnerable to blackmail.”
In one humiliating moment of Hegseth’s confirmation hearing Tuesday, Duckworth had asked him to speak about the political and strategic importance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,or ASEAN, and he wasn’t able to conjure the name of a single member state.
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