Hegseth Hearing Was a National Embarrassment

Tom Nichols: “What America and the world saw today was not a serious examination of a serious man. Instead, Republicans on the committee showed that they would rather elevate an unqualified and unfit nominee to a position of immense responsibility than cross Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or the most ardent Republican voters in their home states. America’s allies should be deeply concerned; America’s enemies, meanwhile, are almost certainly laughing in amazement at their unexpected good fortune.”

“Most of the GOP senators asked questions that had little to do with the defense of the United States and everything to do with the peculiar obsessions that dominate the alternative reality of right-wing television and talk radio, especially the bane of ‘wokeness.’ Perhaps that was just as well for Hegseth, because the few moments where anything of substance came up did not go well for him.”