Pete Hegseth Declines to Answer

Jonathan Chait: “At his confirmation hearing, the defense-secretary nominee looked like a man who understood that the fix was in…”

“Hegseth’s strategy today was to evade these problems altogether. In this, he had the full cooperation of the committee’s Republican majority. If you’ve ever had media training for a television appearance, a common piece of advice is to use the prompt to get to whatever point you wish to make, rather than focus on answering the question. The method generally works on television because the queries are mostly just a way of saying, ‘Now it’s your turn to talk.'”

“It isn’t supposed to work in a Senate hearing, especially one in which lawmakers have serious qualms about the nominee’s record or statements. But Hegseth, a slick and successful television talk-show host, employed it to great effect.”