He said, she said stories are as old as the hills. I can imagine two cave people, a man and a woman, grunting before the elder of the tribe in front of the fire about what really happened that previous night. The basics are always the same: the female got taken unfair advantage of and the male claims, au contraire, “she wanted it.” Trump world is filled with these scenarios, because Trump himself is an adjudicated rapist and likely he feels comfortable with other sexual abusers around him. Or at least that’s an easy theory to concoct, considering how many of Trump’s nominees and cohorts have sexual assault accusations on their resume.
One of these is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to head up the Department of Defense. We’ve heard from both Pete Hegseth’s purported victim and from Hegseth himself. The victim says she believed she was drugged, she didn’t remember a lot of detail and a rape kit was used when she went to the ER and then the incident was reported to the authorities. Pretty damaging. But not nearly as damaging as the picture that Hegseth himself has painted. Tim Miller points out what a train wreck Hegseth is:
“Here’s what Pete Hegseth is pitching people happened in this situation: In this situation, he’s drunk at a conservative conference. At 1:30 am, he’s screaming about how he has freedom of speech and berating a hotel staffer,” Miller said, referencing details from a police report released Wednesday. “Then he takes a woman back to his hotel room for what he says is consensual sex.”
Hegseth’s personal history, according to Miller, only compounds the problem. At the time of the alleged incident, Hegseth was in the middle of divorcing his second wife after fathering a child with a coworker, now his third wife.
“This guy’s personal life is a total disaster,” Miller continued. “And he has a love child, and he’s in between marriages, and he’s drunkenly shouting at hotel staff, and he’s having another affair, meanwhile, with not one of the three women that are his wives.”
Miller argued that, while some might overlook personal scandals in a highly qualified candidate, Hegseth doesn’t fit that bill.
“He’s a weekend morning talk show host. This is a preposterous pick on every level: He’s not qualified for the job and the judgment that he’s shown privately leaves much to be desired,” Miller concluded.
Hegseth has no management experience yet he’s expected to oversee the Department of Defense, which has millions of employees, active duty military personnel, civilian employees and contractors. His main qualification is that he “looks the part” which is basically Trump’s only concern. He’s not running a real government, he’s doing a reality TV show about running a government. Those are two different things.
Hegseth is the next lightning rod for scrutiny now that Matt Gaetz is out after eight tumultuous days since Trump announced him as a pick for the post of Attorney General. Now Hegseth is on the front burner. And again, let’s be charitable. Let’s take Hegseth’s word for exactly what happened that evening. It’s still a train wreck of a night. He’s still a train wreck of a person.
Then there’s the issue of Trump’s first administration, during which Hegseth lobbied Donald to pardon several accused war criminals. This also shows a lack of judgement. Do we want the military run by a man who keeps displaying a lack of judgement and whose highest achievement so far is to be a part-time host at Fox News? I hope that some senators will stand up to Trump. He can’t primary them all. They won’t all come up for reelection in 2026, not even close. Maybe that’s what will hold the line for us, is the simple fact that no matter how down and dirty Trump wants to get, there is only so much he can really do.
this is the point, this is what maga wanted right?
There’s the rape kit which indicates NON consensual sex. There’s the woman’s account and the contemporaneous account from her friend, and then there’s Hegseth’s own account. The police DID refer him for criminal prosecution. Why that didn’t happen is a longer matter but we all know why even victims are reluctant to press charges even in cases that aren’t high profile like this one would have been.
As for the police, I can’t help but wonder if they had the same reaction the cops did in the Kobe Bryant rape case. He was frank in his statement about the sex, and their reaction afterwards was ‘THAT’S what he calls consensual sex?’ In other words as far as they were concerned he admitted openly she didn’t want what happened to happen but he bent her over and helped himself because her just showing up to his room was in his mind (as is so often the case with such celebrities) consent. A sort of ‘she was expecting to get f**ked or she wouldn’t have come to my room’ attitude.
Hegseth is simply another in a long line of a-holes who believe when they’re horny women are to be f**ked and regardless of how they came to be in the room or whether they want to leave if he wants them then by god they will get (literally) f**ked by him whether they want it or not. Makes him just the kind of guy Trump would take to.
I long ago gave up any hopes of ever having a social/romantic life again and these days don’t feel so bad about it. Women have always had to be wary of men and before I got fat I was still noticably taller than average with broad shoulders. Despite my pre-Trump nature which readily was apparent to women I worked with and got to know a bit as a “gentle giant” I was to anyone who didn’t know me physically imposing. Even intimidating to some. The attempt by Trump to elevate people like Gaetz and Hegseth is sickening for various reasons. One of them is that it will embolden too many asshats and/or INCELS to be even worse than they already have been.
I don’t like it when women make sweeping statements about men that are negative BUT I understand why they’d make them. So I don’t take offense. I can’t sit here and say if I were a woman who’d had to put up with what women have had to put up with sometimes I would feel the same way and say so.
For me, the proof that this was not consensual was in Hegseth’s first (of many) changes in his story. When the “she wanted consensual sex” line was being doubted, he changed it to “actually she was the aggressor!” What a strange thing for a strong “alpha” male to say…”I didn’t really want to, but she was so powerful I had no choice!” He didn’t say that until he was backed into a corner and grasping for a way out. I believe that such a scenario CAN happen to a man, but this was not a private admission to investigating officers. Hegseth screamed it to stop the media pressure and gave it self-imposed incredibility. 👎