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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Happy day before Thanksgiving. Don't forget, the weather is supposed to be wet tomorrow. Rain and wind around New York City. Maybe snow if you're heading north, depending where the snow line turns out to be. Make your travel plans accordingly. Make sure you're taking safety into account. It may not be a great day to watch the parade in person. Why couldn't the drought take a break until just one day later, right?

Later in the show, we'll take your calls with one thing you're thankful for right now. We'll do our latest 100 Years of 100 Things segment. Thing No. 43 will be 100 years of how we celebrate Thanksgiving with your oral history calls included and historian Kenneth C. Davis. We'll also review the evidence today in the Daniel Penny subway chokehold killing case. The prosecution and defense have now both completed their cases. Our reporter, Samantha Max, has been in the courtroom for all of it and she'll be here.

We'll start with the most controversial Trump nominee now that Matt Gaetz has withdrawn for attorney general. Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump's nominee for defense secretary, has mostly been the source of controversy because of his position that women should be removed from combat roles in the military, and for the 2017 sexual assault allegation against him that resulted in a police report and an out-of-court settlement with his accuser that included a non-disclosure agreement as he was working as a public personality, a Fox News host.

There's more to the concerns about Pete Hegseth's fitness for the job that isn't getting as much press. Those are some of the things I want to talk about. For the National Guard, Hegseth was scheduled to be on duty for the Biden inauguration in 2021. Did you know this? His superiors removed him because of concerns that he could be an insider threat. He's acknowledged this. Not acknowledged that he was a threat, acknowledged that he was removed over that concern.

One cause for that concern was a tattoo that he has that's often associated with white supremacist groups, a tattoo known as "Deus vult." Related perhaps? Perhaps. Hegseth wrote in one of his books that all the diversity-recruiting messages for the military made white kids feel like they're not wanted. He wrote, "America's white sons and daughters are walking away from the military, and who can blame them?"

True or not on the facts, Hegseth sees diversity efforts as victimizing whites, not just trying to have the military seem welcoming and equitable to all Americans. Maybe in a confirmation hearing, the Senate will wind up debating that. I actually looked that up this morning, by the way, because I think these numbers are knowable facts. According to the Defense Department's own demographics report for 2022, which was the most recent year I could find, 2022, pretty recent, 69% of US service members are white, 69%.

According to the 2020 census, just 62% of all Americans identify as white as opposed to something other than white or mixed race. It seems like white Americans are overrepresented in the military, not walking away, comparing census figures to military. The Pentagon's own demographics, you can look it up. A story in The Guardian last week was headlined, Trump’s Pentagon Pick Hegseth Wrote of US Military Taking Sides in "Civil War."

There's a lot to discuss about Pete Hegseth. With us for that today is Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post national security reporter focused on Congress. Her latest article is called, Senate Republicans are More Receptive to Hegseth Despite Gaetz’s Exit. Abigail, nice to have you. Thanks for some pre-Thanksgiving time when I know everybody's busy. Welcome to WNYC.

Abigail Hauslohner: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: First, why do you think President-elect Trump named Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary nominee in the first place? What do you think were the main reasons for Trump that Pete Hegseth is the guy before we get into some of these specific controversies?

Abigail Hauslohner: If we go off of just what we publicly have seen of the two men's relationship before Hegseth was named, Hegseth was a host on Fox & Friends Weekend, one of the Fox News shows that Trump loves to watch, talks about watching, and appears on. Hegseth had interviewed Trump several times on the show for Fox. Trump had actually, in June, just as recently as June, had mused on the show with Hegseth that he thought Hegseth would be a great pick for defense secretary.

This wasn't as much as the nomination surprised many people in Washington. When you look back on their interactions, it wasn't totally out of left field. Trump indicated that actual conversation. When Trump mused about how Hegseth would be great for the job, it came about because Hegseth was talking at that moment about the problem of wokeness in the military. This is a talking point we've heard a lot from the right, from conservatives on Capitol Hill.

This has been a big theme of debates around defense policy for the past couple of years. That is this idea that the military and government in general has gotten too woke, meaning that they are prioritizing diversity initiatives and inclusivity. The conservative talking point is that they are doing that at the expense of having a competent fighting force, a lethal fighting force. Hegseth has been very outspoken about this. Trump really is receptive to that and he liked it.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, it's one thing to say, "I like that," when you're in a political campaign and you're trying to rally base voters who might have a sense of white grievance and be inclined to vote for you on that basis. It's another thing to actually appoint that person once you've been elected president. I'm curious on various of these diversity issues. Is Trump signaling his intention to remove women from combat roles or try to scale back diversity training and recruitment per se? Because ultimately, it's not up to something the defense secretary has said on television. It's up to the President, who would be his boss.

Abigail Hauslohner: Right, and Trump has not given us any indication that he's going to be removing women or targeting people based on their race or gender to remove from the military. What Republicans say that they want to go after is the federal spending that's in the budget every year, particularly under the Biden administration, to promote diversity, to promote diverse recruitment in the military and in the federal workforce in general, and to make sure that people who aren't just white people, people who aren't just white men feel represented, feel like they have an opportunity to grow, to advance in their careers, feel heard. There are various initiatives in the Pentagon and the military to try to promote that diversity and equality, make sure people are treated fairly regardless of race, gender identity. Republicans and Trump want to do away with those initiatives. They want to eliminate that funding.

Brian Lehrer: Has anybody else keyed on that passage from one of his books that I read in the intro that I saw in a Facebook post about white kids feeling like they're not wanted and white Americans walking away from the military or done any deeper fact-check than I did this morning? Here I am at seven o'clock in the morning preparing four segments for a talk show with me and my producer.

I only had time to, real quick, look up the census numbers and look up the military demographics numbers. Maybe there's a deeper dive on that than I did, but it looks like white people are overrepresented in the military, which, if that's true, would indicate that Hegseth's sense of grievance may be misplaced or inaccurate or he's paranoid as a white person or even as some of the other allegations go, white supremacist.

Abigail Hauslohner: What his fears speak to, this is a talking point we've heard a lot actually on the right, and not just with the military, but particularly from white men really taking an issue with the idea of diversity initiatives and affirmative action is part of that whole debate. There's a view on the right that affirmative action or anything like that, anything that prioritizes or tries to promote representation of not just white people in the federal workforce or elsewhere is harmful to them and that they are then being discriminated against for their race, whether that's reflective of reality is something completely different. As you said, there are plenty of white people in the military.

What Hegseth and other conservatives are drawing from when they say that white people are walking away, what they're talking about actually is the recruitment. Right now, the military has a recruitment problem. That's been true for years. That has been the subject of intense partisan debate and honest debate amongst experts as to why recruitment is down. One of the ideas is that while there aren't any real active wars for one thing, so you don't have the kind of patriotism driving young people to say, "Oh, I'm going to go fight and defend America abroad." That happened after 9/11. You also have war fatigue. There aren't a ton of people who say, "Yes, I want to go abroad and get shot at for this government."

Brian Lehrer: We have low unemployment, right? If we accept the premise that's often been described that there's always somewhat of an economic draft into the military, people who aren't going to have as many opportunities in the private sector because, unless there is a war or patriotic fervor after something like 9/11, the military is a pretty risky option for a lot of people theoretically, at least potentially, if we get into a war.

Abigail Hauslohner: That's right. It doesn't pay that well.

Brian Lehrer: It doesn't pay that well. I guess my follow-up question would be, is there any evidence that there's any more of a recruitment fall-off among white Americans than among Americans of color?

Abigail Hauslohner: Certainly, you'd hear from, I think, Hegseth and conservatives that there has been. I have not personally seen data to back that up. I think that is the subject of intense debate. I don't know that the military has presented that data if they have it to show if they've done any analysis to see whether the racial representation is dropping off from certain groups wanting to join the military.

Certainly, what you hear often from Republican members of Congress is they say, back in their districts, that they talk to young men who are just leaving high school and who, in another era, might have wanted to enlist in the military, telling them allegedly that, "Oh, well, they don't want to join the military now because the military is too woke." That is something that we hear from conservatives quite a bit.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think they mean by "woke," if you've done any reporting on this, other than just more diverse?

Abigail Hauslohner: It means more diverse. It means, again, this sense of grievance that the military is prioritizing race, specifically not white, as a recruitment factor or promotion factor over merit. That is the main sense of grievance here, is that belief that that's what happens and that they would get passed over potentially despite being, say, excellent soldiers or commanders, that they would get passed over for promotion because they're white.

That is a very strong sentiment on the right. There's that sense of grievance and then there's also what you hear a lot is this sense that there is an excess funding and attention and prioritization by the military paid to transgender issues and LGBTQ representation. That's another thing that the Biden administration says, "Okay, this is blown out of proportion, exaggerated."

What you see conservatives seize on are examples like, "Oh, well, there was a drag show allowed to occur on this base," or "There's an LGBTQ club on this base that receives funding through the Pentagon for their annual social events." People take issue with that, which is part of just this larger culture wars that we're seeing certainly on Capitol Hill and nationwide over these hot-button issues that many liberals favor and many conservatives oppose.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your support or opposition or questions about Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary with Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post national security reporter focused on Congress, who's been covering this nomination and the reaction to it. 212-433-WNYC. Anybody who served recently want to comment on your experiences with any of the things that we were just describing that Hegseth is on one side of, other people are on other sides of? 212-433-WNYC. Any women who served in combat want to weigh in or anyone else? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, call or text. Abigail, your article, Senate Republicans are More Receptive to Hegseth Despite Gaetz’s Exit. I know reporters don't write the headlines, but any reason that was framed as "despite Matt Gaetz's exit"?

Abigail Hauslohner: Right. Well, I wrote that story on the day that Matt Gaetz, who, you'll recall, the Florida congressman who Trump had nominated to be his attorney general. That nomination lasted eight days, and then Gaetz withdrew under pretty intense scrutiny about some sexual misconduct allegations against him and an investigation in Congress that had been ongoing up until that nomination.

What was interesting about Gaetz, although unsurprising if you spend a lot of time on the Hill, was that Republicans in the Senate, whose job it is to confirm these nominations, they were pretty openly dismissive or outright hostile to Gaetz as a nominee. There was little question from pretty early on whether whether Gaetz would actually be able to get the votes to be confirmed because he's widely reviled on the Hill. He doesn't have very many friends. He's really alienated other members of his party.

Even Trump allies in the Senate and in the House really don't like the guy and made it pretty clear early on that they were unlikely to vote for his confirmation. Now, as soon as he was out, it was really noticeable, the juxtaposition between the reactions to Gaetz and the reactions of those same people to Hegseth, who, as you mentioned at the start of the show, has some of his own sexual misconduct, sexual assault allegations hanging over him in which Republicans to Hegseth were like, "Well, he's not Gaetz."

I started hearing these more excuses made for Hegseth. "Well, that situation is different. The police investigated this allegation from 2017 that he had assaulted a woman at a political conference. No charges were pressed." The way Republicans were saying it, that clears him in a sense. To be clear, no one cleared him. There were no charges pressed. You started to see a lot of just more conciliatory, more open thoughts being expressed about Hegseth.

Some of the speculation I've heard is that no one has commanded both loyalty and fear over the party quite like Trump before in terms of presidents. Members are very aware of what could happen to them based on seeing what has happened to colleagues if they cross Trump, if they come out publicly against him and try to thwart his agenda, whether by voting against his nominees or otherwise.

I think there is this sense that you really have to pick your battles if you're a Republican. I think Gaetz was one that people were willing to pick and say, "Okay, the buck stops here," but there now may be a sense that, "Okay, Gaetz is out, so we have to be more open to the other nominees." How many nominees of Trump's can we vote down without incurring a problem and retribution from the President?

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Abigail Hauslohner from The Washington Post on Pete Hegseth's nomination to be defense secretary. A number of people are writing in who want to know more about his tattoos. We'll take that up when we come back. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're talking about the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary with Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post national security reporter focused on Congress. We'll take some phone calls. We're getting a lot of texts too as we go. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Here's an example of a text that has come in about his tattoos. It says, "I know what Hegseth's tattoos mean. That alone should be disqualifying." Maybe you could tell us the story of Hegseth being removed from guarding the Biden inauguration and what his tattoos reportedly had to do with it.

Abigail Hauslohner: Right. The Biden inauguration, as you recall, came after January 6th, which was when rioters urged on by Trump stormed the Capitol and tried to disrupt the certification or stop the certification of the election results that named Biden president. It was a pretty violent riot. There were people who were killed and injured. After that, obviously, Capitol Police, National Guard, Secret Service, everyone was preparing on heightened alert, I think, doing extra security for the inauguration in 2020.

Various national guardsmen, I guess, on a chat identified an image of Hegseth, who was then in the DC National Guard showing him shirtless and a picture of his bicep that showed some tattoos that people in the chat then flagged to National Guard leadership as being problematic. The main one are Latin words that you mentioned he has on his arm that say "Deus vult," which are kind of a Christian battle cry from the First Crusade in the Middle Ages, though it's become associated often with some extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters. These are groups that participated in the siege at the Capitol on January 6th, 2020.

These tattoos were flagged. Hegseth was subsequently told to stand down from duty that day, to not be part of the security for the inauguration. Now, the National Guard has said that there are multiple things at play, although Hegseth has really seized on this episode and wrote about it as formative and certainly seems to have informed his perception of an overly woke, meaning also in this sense, overly liberal military that restricts conservative speech, in this case, his tattoos, and discriminates against people with Christian religious or conservative views.

Brian Lehrer: He is a Christian conservative. He's made that very clear. Interesting that these tattoos are associated with the Crusades era, which is Christian military aggression way back then. Also, I read that he wrote in one of his books that American should be focused on faith and family and that there should be laws that make it difficult for parents of kids to divorce, and yet part of his personal history, and I don't know if this will come up in the confirmation context, but from what I've read, he was married to one woman.

They had three kids, then they got divorced after he had an affair with a work colleague. Those two got married, didn't have any kids. Then they got divorced when he had an affair with another work colleague, someone from Fox, and then they got married. They've had another kid since. He's got, reportedly at least, this serial history of having affairs while he's married and in his first marriage's case while they had kids, but he writes that the laws should make it hard for people with kids to get divorced. Have you seen all of that?

Abigail Hauslohner: Hegseth, certainly, he's been a big proponent of a lot of what you think of as traditional conservative values. He's spoken about women basically in the military. He has been very dismissive of women having a role in the military and, yes, has promoted these conservative Christian, traditional family values. Now, the fact that he has had multiple marriages and affairs and the assault allegation, that obviously conflicts with this stated ideology or what you would assume goes with this stated ideology. That's hardly unique, I'm afraid to say, on Capitol Hill, where you find plenty of examples-

Brian Lehrer: I'm shocked.

Abigail Hauslohner: -of people on both sides of the aisle whose expressed ideology or politics don't exactly align with their actual behavior. That's not unique, but we'll see. I think Hegseth, certainly in the confirmation, if he makes it to that point, is going to get a lot of tough questions from Democrats on all of these things, on the tattoo, on the sexual assault allegation, on his view of women in the military, on his view of family values and wokeness, and who he plans to fire at the Pentagon, and so on.

The question that I think a lot of people have is, how far will the Republicans go? How hard are they going to press him with these questions? Maybe they'll get the hard ones out of the way behind closed doors. Are any of them willing to really take a stand to vote down his nomination? I think we'll be looking particularly at some of the more centrist Republicans and women Republicans, including some who have served in the US military themselves, to see where they land on this.

Brian Lehrer: A number of texts coming in about Hegseth's notion of wokeness. One listener writes, "When talking about wokeness, I do appreciate your guest framing it the way that she did, but what I would like to hear more of is a questioning of the assumption that every person of color who gets included is incompetent. Have there been studies or results that show that people who lead DEI efforts are actually hiring people who are unqualified or ineffective? I think the reason this trope has been allowed to fester and grow the way it has is because no one poses that the non-white person who gets hired is actually competent and effective." Well, I think we probably do, but what about that? Studies in the Pentagon, in particular, indicating if the people who get promoted are any, more or less, competent however they measure that based on demographic associations?

Abigail Hauslohner: I am not aware of any such studies. Those making the argument, I have not seen them citing specific data. Like so much when you hear racist or racial grievances, a lot of it comes from just personal anecdotes. People are speaking from their personal experience and perceptions. You don't often hear people justify a sense like this with actual data.

I certainly have not seen that study. I would be surprised if it existed, showing that somehow incompetent people are being promoted because they help diversify the department. I don't think that there has been any indication that that is happening. You hear not just in the military but in the federal workforce from white officials claiming that they were passed over for things because they are white. That is their perception and that's where some of this comes from.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "You missed the point, I think. Make it harder for the woman to get a divorce, but he gets to keep having affairs. Again, he wants to control women." I think that is the point we were making, but I appreciate the listener pointing it out again explicitly like that. Elena in Dunedin, Florida, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elena.

Elena: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Elena: Okay, great. Thanks for taking the call. I love the point so far, but no one's addressed the utter lack of experience of this guy leading anything, let alone a huge, enormous department number of people and budget. That poses, of course, a national and global security risk. You wonder if Trump and his cronies, with this appointment and his other nominees, are just trying to blow everything up and sow chaos because he's clearly not fit for this just from his lack of experience and even just that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Elena. Yes, that's another stream of texts we're getting too. Another one, to Elena's point, says, "Would you please at least mention Hegseth's utter lack of qualifications for the role of Secretary of Defense and the fact that he would need top security clearance for it?" What about the experience question, Abigail?

Abigail Hauslohner: It's interesting. This was something that, I think, one of the most immediate concerns that came up when he was named that, I think, frankly, has just been overshadowed by these other big issues that have come out such as the sexual assault allegation and the wokeness plans and so on and so forth. Certainly, Hegseth has no experience, has never run a government agency, has never run any government office that we're aware of, certainly hasn't managed a military that has a workforce of about three million people worldwide.

That includes service members and civilian personnel at the Pentagon and the biggest budget of any federal agency in the US government. That is a huge, huge task that normally is not given to someone who has never run anything, even a fraction of that size and heft. I think lawmakers do have questions about that. That's something that when his nomination was announced, it took a lot of people by surprise.

I heard Republican senators tell me. One refrain I heard over and over again was, "Yes, I don't know anything about him." People really didn't. He wasn't on this presumed short list of people to be potential defense secretary. He was a Fox News host for about a decade. He was a veteran. He had served abroad. He had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a National Guardsman, but there are many, many veterans beyond that.

Brian Lehrer: What was his highest rank or what he commanded?

Abigail Hauslohner: You know what? You'll have to give me a second to confirm that, to check back on our reporting.

Brian Lehrer: I think I read major and that he really didn't have any kind of command position. I guess if people want to push back on that lack of experience, they could say he did run a veterans advocacy organization. Maybe you could tell us more about that and how big a thing that is and that he does have big think, whether we agree with him or not, thoughts about military policy. He's written multiple books.

Whether it's about wokeness or women in combat or whatever it is, he's got a real philosophy of how the Pentagon should be run. Somebody could say, "Well, they pick people from academia sometimes to run big departments because they've got the ideas." Maybe they picked Pete Hegseth on that basis as well because his ideas align with Trump's ideas. He ran a veterans advocacy organization and they'll find other people to do the implementation.

Abigail Hauslohner: Right, yes, and that's actually something that I did hear from some Republicans was, "Well, we don't know anything about him. It was kind of a surprise, but he is a decorated combat veteran." One senator, Mike Rounds, told me, "That gives him credibility." Then I asked Rounds at the time. I said, "Are you at all concerned that Hegseth hasn't run a government office before?" He told me that there's never going to be a perfect individual. He told me that they're going to be looking for in these hearings as they get to know him.

Rounds is on the Armed Services Committee. I should say that. They will be doing the initial assessment of Hegseth. He said that they're going to be looking at what his philosophy is and how he would approach the Defense Department, what kind of changes he would try to make, what his management style would be. That's something that they are open to that Rounds indicated. He could potentially have all the right answers to that even though he doesn't have the more traditional experience.

Then I heard other people farther to the right actually say that his lack of experience was a bonus because they were citing this idea that part of the reason in conservatives' views that the military is too "woke" or too broken in their mind is that it's run by all these career generals who have lost touch with the rank and file and who are at their core politicians. These are their allegations, their perceptions, and that they think you need a rogue outsider to really shake things up and fix this big, bloated institution and make it more representative of their views and less connected to what they see as liberal politics.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play the essential Hegseth clip on women in combat. This is from the Shawn Ryan podcast.

Pete Hegseth: I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.

Brian Lehrer: On the exact language that he used there, "Hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal." Listener texts that they listened to that clip in the past and he never even alleges that women in combat have made us any less lethal or less effective in the military. Interesting?

Abigail Hauslohner: Yes, so one of the big questions I have is, how will Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa-- She's a Republican. She's on the Armed Services Committee. She's also a veteran. How is she going to question him in the hearing? I think a lot of people are waiting to see what she says. She was very noticeably, I found in the past two weeks, really avoiding the press. We tried to ask her about Hegseth and she really didn't want to talk about it. We're going to be looking to her and other female veterans especially, I think, who you would presume might have some issue with their future potential defense secretary saying that they don't belong in the military, in combat, that their service is not as valuable as a man's.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned Senator Joni Ernst. What about Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democratic senator who lost her legs in combat?

Abigail Hauslohner: Right. Well, Senator Tammy Duckworth, who is a Democrat from Illinois, has been going very vocal about her sense that Hegseth is not the appropriate pick. She told me, she thinks he's not at all qualified. She has serious concerns for what his appointment would mean for women, for recruitment. She thinks that he would alienate a lot of people, that you wouldn't have women or members of minority groups who want to join the military. She thinks he would downgrade protections for women in the military. Certainly, Senator Duckworth has not been quiet about her level of disapproval for Hegseth. It's the Republican women who I think we're going to be more closely watching as their response is really going to be interesting. Do they go against Trump or do they sign off on him?

Brian Lehrer: On that clip that we just played, listener writes, "10 years ago, I served in the CIA as a young woman. I served alongside many other women of all ethnic backgrounds. Our leadership skewed heavily male. Just wanted to remind listeners that women found bin Laden. We have a unique skill set that is invaluable in conflict zones. Google Secret Service in Colombia for an example of why females are so critical to intelligence and security work." That's an interesting post, Abigail. I saw New Jersey Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, another veteran, on TV the other day emphasizing that point that women have some very specific skill sets like being able to enter homes and talk to women in combat zones that are really relevant to allowing women to be in combat.

Abigail Hauslohner: Certainly. In a previous life, I was a war correspondent for seven years based in the Middle East. I used to do embeds with the US military in Iraq, in Afghanistan. While I covered Afghanistan, the Marines were in the process of introducing women Marines to their units, essentially in part because they had realized how critical it is to have women when you're storming into very conservative homes, where it is a huge, huge problem and source of major grievance and violence potentially for strangers, for men to be searching or even seeing women in someone else's household.

Certainly, women were critical in that. Also, just more generally, I think there's been plenty of examples of women, whether it's because they have special skills or not, being equally valuable in performing combat, in covering combat, in serving US government missions across different types for many, many years. There hasn't been any real data that I've seen to back up this notion that women are somehow detrimental to combat.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I would point out and, again, these are all things that I'm seeing in the press that aren't getting raised very much as opposed to the sexual assault allegation and what he's saying about women in combat. On the women in combat, it's not just women in combat who he seems to marginalize. I noticed that Hegseth's latest book is called The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. His book title doesn't even acknowledge that there are any women in the military who help keep us free, never mind in combat. Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. Has anyone raised that as an issue?

Abigail Hauslohner: Well, I think that, certainly, there has long been this tension in the military about women's roles. In some ways, it's an extension of or related to a larger grievance that we hear from men. As we've seen, advancements in women's rights are nationwide. We hear about men who feel like their rights are being challenged or that they're being discriminated against with greater inclusion or greater rights for others. Also, that's not just limited to men. This is a dynamic, obviously, that we've seen for centuries all over the world. When one group is empowered, the groups that previously enjoyed the more dominant power tend to take issue.

Brian Lehrer: We're over time, but I just have to mention this one other thing because I included it in the intro. I'm sure people want to know what that's about, about the "civil war" that Hegseth referred to in one of his books. I got this from an article in The Guardian and it refers to some things that Hegseth has written as an author. One in a chapter of a book called Make the Crusade Great Again, he writes, "Whether you like it or not--" speaking to people on the left, "Whether or not you like it, you are an infidel, an unbeliever, according to the false religion of leftism. You can submit now or later or you can fight."

That's one quote. Then another one, The Guardian says, "Among the consequences--" Oh, this is from a book that he released in 2020 when that campaign was going on. The Guardian says, "Among the consequences should Biden win, Hegseth predicted, would be that, 'America will decline and die. A national divorce will ensue. Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back. The military--'" Here's the most inflammatory part. "The military and police, both bastions of freedom-loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice." The military and the police. "It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war." Abigail, this better come up in the confirmation hearings.

Abigail Hauslohner: I would be surprised if it doesn't. I think that we've covered a lot of themes here that I expect will make for very interesting viewing during the confirmation and also our themes to watch more broadly as the Trump administration or the new Trump administration takes office. These are not sentiments also limited to Hegseth. We've heard these from other appointees, other nominees. There's a lot to watch as it plays out in the months ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Right, because he would actually be in charge of that military. Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post national security reporter focused on Congress. Thank you so much for joining us today. Happy Thanksgiving.

Abigail Hauslohner: It's a pleasure. Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

 

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