As we’ve said before, even if you take Pete Hegseth’s version of the truth to be fact, it’s not flattering. Since his nomination to head the Department of Defense, the scrutiny of his past has been intense and the stories are moving across the internet like wildfire. The Daily Beast reports “a shocking picture of Hegseth at his alleged surly, drunken worst: while at a bar in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in May 2015, on an official visit with the organization, he allegedly chanted “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” while visibly intoxicated.” And this is on official business, mind you, so we don’t even want to ask what the man does or how he behaves in his free time.
The report details several incidents where staff said they had to remove or carry a drunken Hegseth, so inebriated he couldn’t walk and in some cases passed out, from events.
Hegseth resigned from Concerned Veterans for America under pressure in 2016, The New Yorker said, citing three sources aware of the circumstances, including one who contributed to the whistleblower report.
“I’ve seen him drunk so many times,” one of the contributors to the report told The New Yorker. “I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.”
That covers just one of the two organizations Hegseth ran.
At Vets for Freedom, where he held the top post from 2007 to 2012, Hegseth ran up mountain-sized debt and was subject to rumors of spending on parties, or what one former associate of the group told The New Yorker “could politely be called trysts.”
A group of donors to the group hired an accountant to review its books after concerns came to a head in late 2008.
Shortly thereafter, in a January 2009 email, Hegseth sent a letter to the donors admitting the group owed over $430,000 in unpaid bills and had credit card debts of up to $75,000 while having less than a grand in the bank. Hegseth’s letter reportedly told the donors they would have to give him more cash or face the organization they backed shutting down.
Now this last part is intriguing because the Department of Defense and the Pentagon come under criticism for waste and not being able to pass audits. So what is the sense of putting a man in charge of a governmental department which already is challenged with financial accountability, when the man in question has demonstrated a complete inability to deal with managing money himself?
It’s Murphy’s Law meets the Peter Principle. If Hegseth gets the gig, look for whatever is already wrong to get worse. Hegseth in no way merits this kind of responsibility from how he has handled responsibility in the past. Yet that’s probably why he appeals to Trump. Trump loves people who just free wheel it like he does, having control of organzations and situations that they never should be even near, let alone in control of.
This will make for compelling C-Span content and let’s hope it ends there.
Sounds like he’s got a big problem, with Booze & “self-control.”
Horndog Hegseth and Brewski Brett Kavanaugh are probably already on each other’s speed-dial!
I’m reminded of a certain person nominated for knowing and running everything about energy, including, but not limited to nuclear power plants, keeping track of who has what in their country as fuel and or possible weapon grade chemistry … A very strange choice, as when he was questioned about his qualifications, he folded like a wet Kleenex … Shocked at the enormous responsibility Trump was hanging around his neck, the simple Texan bowed out …
Now, these new choices are so far gone, they are not even questioning their own abilities to become the highest powered nimrods under Trump … With Trump’s micro-management needs, the firestorms should be awesome when all the military, at virtually all levels, but in my mind, I envision the man at the top, turning to look at Trump and the new Sec. of defense, in the wheelhouse of a huge Carrier, under way to some distant assignment, shooting the bird with both hands and telling them to, “Get off my boat, or I will have security place you on a dingy so you can fight over how to best to row your way back to the States” …
47 loves him. That’s all that counts.