Retired Two-Star Marine Corps Major General Arnold Punaro, Former Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee discusses Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing. He is joined by Bloomberg's Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz.
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Meanwhile, here in Washington, a lot of attention is fixed on what's taking place in the Senate today, or more specifically the Dirks and Senate Office Building, where the Senate Armed Services Committee is currently and still underway, holding the confirmation hearing for the Defense Secretary designate Pete Hegseth, who, of course has been tapped by President elect Donald Trump to lead the Pentagon, an organization with more than three million people reporting up and through it, and it's been a little contentious at times, perhaps no surprise. He's faced very difficult questions from Democrats in regard to a number of issues. But he also began the hearing by pleading his own case. Here's part of his opening statement.
Now, it is true and has been acknowledged, that I don't have a similar biography to defense secretaries of the last thirty years. But as President Trump also told me, we've repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they are retire generals, academics, or defense contractor executives. And where has it gotten us, he believes, and I humbly agree that it's time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm, a change agent, someone with no vested interest in certain companies or specific programs or approved narratives. My only special interest is the warfighter, deterring wars and if called upon, winning wars. By ensuring our warriors never enter a fair fight, we let them win and we bring them home. Like many of my generation, I've been there. I've led troops in combat. I've been on patrol for days. I've pulled a trigger down range, heard bullets whiz by, flexcuffed insurgents, called in close air support, led metavacs, dodged IEDs, pulled out dead bodies, and knelt before a battlefield cross. This is not academic for me. This is my life. I led then and I will lead now.
Pete Hegseth, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in prepared remarks. That's how it started, not only trying to make the case for his nomination and confirmation, of course, but also trying to get ahead of some of the more difficult questions that he might be asked. And he's been asked all of them, and we've got more to go. Here joining us a voice of experience who spent a lot of time with this committee and in rooms like these. Retired Marine Corps Major General Arnold Prenur, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the author of if Confirmed, An Insider's view of the Senate confirmation process. What a perfect voice for today. General has spent some time, and we welcome you back to Bloomberg TV and Radio. As I mentioned, you've been in this room before. How's he doing.
Well?
I think he's doing extremely well. I was very impressed with this opening statement. As you mentioned, I've been involved in the confirmation process for over twelve Secretary of Defense, going all the way back to the Ford administration, both when I was on the committee, the staff director of the committee and then helping various.
Nominees since leaving government.
On a pro bono basis, and so most of our secretaries of Defense get faced tough questionings. But he certainly had a very strong opening statement. I've reviewed all of his advanced policy questions. I've listened very carefully to the hearing, and he's doing exceedingly.
Well in my judgment, well and for many of the questions he is facing, at least the ones posed by Democrats, he's kind of doing so for the first time, as multiple Democratic Senators have pointed out, Sir that Hegseth declined to meet with them in advance of this hearing, even though he was taking meetings with essentially all of the Republicans on this committee. Do you think that that was a mistake or was it unnecessary in this case when he wasn't likely to be able to rely on Democratic votes anyway.
Well, typically the tradition is that nominees, and not just for the Secretary of Defense, all out offense nominees, and of which there are six in the Department of the Fence. So he's going to have a very strong team with him if he's confirmed, and I believe he will be confirmed, And typically they trying to meet with everybody, but everybody's scheduled. I don't have any inside information other than what I just turned into hearing today. I know nominees trying to meet with everybody. I know for a fact that a number of the other nominees, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Army nominee, they're meeting with both sides of the isle. So I don't know what really happened here. It's unfortunate if he didn't have a chance to meet with some of them. But on the other hand, it's not unusual that schedules don't match up.
Yeah, they do all seem to be going out of their way to say the same thing on that front. But general, we'd love for you to bring us behind the scenes a bit and into the process. We hear a lot about mock hearings and murder boards. What goes into preparing someone like Pete Hegseth for a moment like this. How much time do you spend with him? How ugly does it get when you start looking at their record and try to give them a sense of the tough questions they're going to get.
Well, you know, I go back and most of the sect deeps that I've been involved with, going all the way back to Harrold Brown in the cart administration, Cat Weinberger, Don rbsfell Less Aspen all got tough questions. So there's nothing unusual about that.
Number two.
He does take a tremendous amount of preparation. Some of the previous secretaries of the Fence that didn't prepare well did not do well in their confirmation hearing and frankly, they suffered from that when they became even though they got confirmed, you know, they did not have a good impression in the confirmation hearing. So I would assume, and I can tell from just the way he's answering the questions. I can tell from all the material supporting material that's been provided to the committee. I can tell by reading his extensive advanced policy questions. They have done a tremendous amount of preparation to get him ready for this hearing.
But that's appropriate. You need to do that.
As some people have said, to the fists, Apartments of Law just most complex organization in.
The world, and it's all about war fighting.
And so I would think that obviously they spend a tremendous amount of time with him getting him ready, and it shows he's doing a good job.
So you think general that he's doing a good job and arguing that he is in fact qualified to do this job, even though he, as has been raised in the hearing, he hasn't managed an organization bigger than hundreds of people, let alone millions, that he actually hasn't led an organizational audit, let alone one that could number in the hundreds of billions. Of dollars. I mean, is your takeaway from this hearing that Pete Hegseth is firmly qualified for this position.
He's qualified in terms of the things that the Secretary of Defense is involved in, and they are in Title ten. Somebody's brought up one are the requirements, the air requirements in Title ten, the US Code that creates the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. And he's he brought out the three things that I think are most important. He's focused on improving the terrems because those of.
Us that have been in combat like him, like myself and others. I've been wounded in combat and been to more than one more. You want to deter wards. You don't want to have to engage your wars, and you want to focus on.
War fighting and lethality. That's the role of the Secretary of Defense. He's going to have their sixty five confirmed people. They've already named a very strong team to be in there with him. John Falon to be Secretary of the Navy. Dan Driscol to be Secretary of the Army. Brince Kobe a real expert on policy, Mike Duffy a very tremendous expert in the acquisition area, and the deputy Feinberg a very very successful businessman, and the number two person is the chief operating officer. So the notion that somehow the Secretary of Defense is got to run the Pentagon all by themselves.
And plus you've got the service chiefs, you got the Joint chiefs, you got the war fighting combat and commander.
So in my judgment, it takes that kind of a team, and the names that I've seen so far, because I know most of them have worked with them over the years, very experienced, is going to be a very strong team.
General.
We all remember John Tower in nineteen eighty nine. I don't know if you have any personal anecdotes from that experience or any firsthand stories, but can you speak to our audience about how rare it would be for a nominee like this to go down in a vote and committee or on the floor.
Well, in history, the only one that has not been approved was John Tower, and that was a very sad day.
He was a great chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The full expectation was that.
He would be confirmed, but there were issues that came up during the confirmation process, particularly as it relates to.
The FBI re court that.
Him not being approved, But the Committee and the Congress turned around and the Senate very quickly and put Dick Cheney in very quickly after John Tower's nomination was not approved. And so I think, frankly, the Senate deserves to give Pete headsp an up or down vote on day one. He's the only other civilian in the war fighting chain to come in from the Commander in chief to the combatant commands. We need a Secretary of Defense on there on day one, and he should get an upper down vote, which has been the president for secretaries of the Defense, and people that want to vote for him can vote for him.
People that want to vote a gist him vote against him.
And you know, a majority vote rules, and if he gets a majority vote then he will be eligible to be sworn in and appointed day one. But he deserves an upper down vote on January twentieth. That's been the plan and the president going all the way back to Democrat Republican presidents that on a new president that has a new Secretary of Defense gets an upper down vote on day one, and I hope.
That will be the case.
Well, and assuming he is confirmed ultimately to lead this position. Talk if you will, general about what exactly he's going to inherit If we've heard in this hearing a lot of kind of bureaucratical challenges, if you will, about the acquisition process, about an audit for the DoD. But then there's also the very real challenges in multiple theaters around the world where there are live conflicts or the threat of conflicts. How is he going to be able to navigate both those internal and external questions.
Look, he's inheriting the same challenges as the last two or three presidents of HAAD. We live in a world that's more dangerous and unstable than the peak of the Cold War. We don't have the right strategy for dealing with the threats that we face from Russia to China, Iran, North Korea in global terrorism. We need to get back to basically being able to deter and if the Turrets fails to fight and win two major theater wards on a near simultaneous fasis, we're not getting the bang for the buck we should for the dollars we spend in the Pentagon in constant dollars, and we're spending more than the peak of the Reagan build up.
And the forts and fifty percent smaller.
One of the things he brought out today is we need to get people, you know.
Into the combat arms.
And we have over three hundred thousand active duty military serving in inherently non governmental jobs are serving in the rear with the gear. The overhead in the Pentagon is massive. The requirements process needs performed, the acquisition process needs performed. We spend over four hundred and twenty billion dollars a year in the Pentagon on goods and services, supplies and equipment, and about the only thing you can say about that out but has been more, take longer, get less.
And these problems are well known.
He's going to with his team going to have to tackle every single one of these. If you want to improve the turrens, the turrens is really important. You need to have the military capability. It has to be credible and your adversaries have to believe that you're going.
To use it.
So he's going to inherit some significant challenges in all of these areas.
We're spending some time on Bloomberg TV and Radio with retired Marine Corps General Arnold Pernaro, who literally wrote the book on Senate Confirmations. General, I want to ask you about some criticism that we've heard from Democratic members of the committee about the FBI background check into Pete Hegseth. There are multiple reports here that the FBI did not interview Hegseeth's ex wives or the woman who actually accused him of sexual assaults in twenty seventeen.
How unusual is that?
Would that have been writing on a request from a committee leadership to look into that and interview those women, or is this a problem for the FBI to have not been as comprehensive as it should be.
First of all, I want to applaud the new leadership in the Senate, the Leader Thun and others.
It says, look, we're going.
To require the same kind of FBI fulfilled investigations for the Trump nominees that has been required in every single previous president Democratic, Republican. And so that request doesn't come from the committees, it doesn't come from the Senate. It comes from the White House Council's office, in this case, the Transition Council, because their White House Council for Trump has not been set up till January twentieth, and so they have the FBI go out and do what's called a full filled investigation of potential nominees, and then that material is provided to the chairman and ranking member on the Center of Armed Services Committee, and it's at the chairman's discretion, as it was when my boss was chairman for eight years, as to who else might get access to that. One of the things you have to understand, it's not like an Inspector General report. It's not like a Article thirty two in the military, where there's an investigation their findings and their recommendations and they come to a conclusion and they say.
Well, this person is right and this person's law.
It's just raw investigatory files and they can be very misleading, and so the FBI reports have to be treated with great deference in terms of what they can then used for. One of the things that I felt and people know that was very unfair in the Power thing is that there were a lot of things that got leaked out of the FBI report that weren't corroborated, and it was very damaging. And so I think the approach that Chairman Wicker is taking in terms of restricting the FBI report is appropriate in terms of what's in it, None of us are ever going to know because it's not going to be made available publicly, and certainly you have to rely on the investigatory skills of the FBI that they did a thorough investigation. And so typically what happens is if the Council believes there's disqualifying information in an FBI fulfilling instigation, they'll notify the President and the President will have to decide whether he still.
Wants to go forward or not.
The fact that the report was provided to the chairman ranking member, the fact that that things are going forward, I just I don't have firsthand knowledge. I certainly don't have access to it. I don't have any leaked information. My work and assumption would be there's nothing in that report that's disqualifying, and because the proceedings are going forward, all.
Right, General, thank you so much for joining us on balance of Power today. That's retired Marine Corps General Ernold Panaro, who is Joe mentioned. Is also the author of if Confirmed, An Insider's view of the Senate confirmation process.