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Senate confirms Pete Hegseth as defense secretary

Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote after Sens. McConnell, Murkowski and Collins voted against the Fox News host’s confirmation

Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's nominee to be secretary of defense, attends the inauguration ceremonies in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.

The Senate voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense on Friday evening, salvaging a nomination that had previously appeared to be on the verge of collapsing over insufficient GOP support.

Hegseth, 44, was confirmed 51 to 50, a significantly closer margin than the 93-2 vote than his predecessor, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joined Democrats in opposing Hegseth’s confirmation, forcing Vice President J.D. Vance to come to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking vote that saved the nomination. 

McConnell said in an excoriating statement that Hegseth had not yet demonstrated his aptitude to take “stewardship of the United States Armed Forces, and of the complex bureaucracy that exists to support them.” McConnell spoke of the gravity of the role and the growing geopolitical threats that its next occupant will face, before noting that Hegseth “provided no substantial observations” on how to support U.S. allies against aggression from our adversaries. “Absent, too, was any substantive discussion of countering our adversaries’ alignment with deeper alliance relationships and more extensive defense industrial cooperation of our own,” McConnell said.

“The most consequential Cabinet official in any administration is the secretary of defense. In the face of the gravest threats to U.S. national security interests since World War II, this position is even more important today. Major adversaries are working closer together to undermine U.S. interests around the world,” McConnell explained. “And America’s military capabilities and defense industrial capacity are increasingly insufficient to deter or prevail in major conflict with China or Russia, especially given the real risk of simultaneous challenges from other adversaries like Iran or North Korea.”

“Mere desire to be a ‘change agent’ is not enough to fill these shoes. And ‘dust on boots’ fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job,” he continued. 

The former Senate Republican leader’s vote came one day after he spoke out to Jewish Insider about the growing concern over recent high-ranking Pentagon appointments who oppose U.S. engagement in the Middle East and the individual who hired them. McConnell told JI that the Trump administration should “steer clear of Pentagon advisors who make their Obama and Biden predecessors look tough by comparison.” 

“President [Donald] Trump has committed to restoring peace through strength and standing with Israel. But the folks staffing up his Pentagon operation don’t appear to have read the memo,” McConnell said on Thursday.

The Senate voted 51-49 to invoke cloture on the nomination, allowing it to proceed to a final vote, on Thursday. Murkowski and Collins were the only Republicans to vote against cloture, while the remaining GOP skeptics, including McConnell and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), ultimately voted in favor. 

In the hours leading up to Friday’s vote, McConnell and Tillis were described as the votes to watch, as speculation grew that one or both were considering opposing Hegseth. Tillis ultimately voted to confirm, saving Hegseth’s nomination. 

Tillis explained his decision by noting that he has always pledged to support any of Trump’s Cabinet nominees who had been voted out of committee. 

“From the beginning, I have been clear about my position: if President Trump’s nominees were reported favorably out of the relevant committees, I would support their confirmation on the Senate floor absent new material information about their qualifications. Once Pete Hegseth’s nomination was sent to the floor by my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I conducted my own due diligence, including asking tough questions of Pete and I appreciated his candor and openness in answering them,” Tillis said in a statement. 

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to advance Hegseth in a 14-13 vote on party lines. 

Hegseth’s confirmation process started off on shaky ground, the result of numerous allegations about his interpersonal relationships and alcohol use and concerns about his qualifications to oversee an active-duty force of around 1.3 million service members and a department with a nearly $850 billion annual budget. Aided by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), the national chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Hegseth began actively lobbying skeptical senators with frequent in-person meetings. 

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who has led on issues related to domestic violence and military sexual assault, was initially apprehensive about supporting Hegseth. She began publicly suggesting she was supporting Hegseth by early December, clearing the way for other undecided Republicans who had concerns about his allegations to get on board.

Hegseth is an Army National Guard officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay; a major in the Army Reserve; a Princeton and Harvard graduate; a two-time Bronze Star recipient; a longtime conservative and veteran activist; and a short-lived U.S. Senate candidate. But he’s best known for his role on Fox News, where he’s currently a weekend host.

The Fox host has no apparent leadership experience at the scale of the massive agency and no known experience in policy making or analysis, apart from a brief stint at the Manhattan Institute. He was also reportedly an adviser to Trump on military issues in his first term, particularly urging the pardons of service members accused of war crimes, and was considered to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), in comments to reporters, did not acknowledge or comment on the razor-thin margin of Hegseth’s confirmation or McConnell’s vote.

“Now is the time to get the defense team in place, get the secretary sworn in, and make sure we have a secretary of defense on the job,” Barrasso said. “That’s what we have to do, and we were successful at doing that tonight.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he knew McConnell would be voting against Hegseth. He said, tersely, that he hadn’t seen McConnell’s statement, but, “I understand it was explicit.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called his Republican colleagues “spineless” and said the vote “may well haunt them.” 

Blumenthal said that McConnell had “voted out of conscience and conviction. He really had a sense that Pete Hegseth is unqualified and unprepared for one of the most consequential positions … I hope he did it because he felt it was the right thing to do.”

Asked about whether he expects similar results on other national security nominees, Blumenthal said that he’s “hopeful that Republicans realize that we are in no ordinary times and that what we need now is a few profiles in courage who are willing to stand up when they know the country is at serious risk.”

He said that the nominations of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Kash Patel for FBI director “should be in serious jeopardy.”

Gabbard’s nomination is meeting with continued skepticism from several GOP lawmakers. She will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week.

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