Warning: this episode contains strong language. Over the past few weeks, the resistance of a single Republican senator, Joni Ernst of Iowa, had threatened to derail Donald J. Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense. Karoun Demirjian, who covers Congress for The Times, and Jonathan Swan, who covers politics, discuss how Mr. Trump and his allies ensured that Ms. Ernst’s resistance went away. Guest: Karoun Demirjian, who covers Congress for The New York Times, with a focus on national security. Jonathan Swan, a Times reporter covering politics and Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.
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From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro.
This is the Daily over the past few weeks, the resistance of a single Republican senator has threatened to derail Donald Trump's controversial choice of Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense.
Today, Karin Demirjian and Jonathan Swan with the story of how Trump and his allies ensured that that senator's resistance quickly went away.
It's Monday, December 16th.
Karin, in your role as a congressional reporter, you have been closely tracking the fate of Trump's pick to run the US Military.
Pete Hegseth, A pick that was controversial from the start, but has become only more controversial over the past couple of weeks, Right?
I think everyone was pretty surprised when President Elect Trump picked a Fox News host to be his next secretary of defense.
And the surprise turned into discomfort for a lot of people and shock as allegations started coming out about these fairly sordid details from his past.
First it was an accusation that he had committed sexual assault.
And then after that, it became this article from the New Yorker which alleged that he was drinking on the job and harassing female employees and was mismanaging the veterans nonprofits that he was running.
In the middle of all that, there was this email that cropped up that his mother had written him into 2018, calling him an abuser of women and telling him what a reprehensible person he was.
And so as that mountain of allegations grew, there started to be more senators, including some of Trump's allies, who started to express real discomfort with having to back this guy, or at least with the fact that they were having to grapple with these allegations and, you know, calling them disturbing, calling them troublesome.
And that's a problem for Trump because even though Senate Republicans are going to take the majority in the new year, it's a very slim majority, they cannot afford to lose more than three of their own if they actually want to get these nominees confirmed.