A pair of CNN commentators clashed over the sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of defense.
Pete Hegseth has been nominated to lead the Pentagon, but the Trump transition team was reportedly caught off guard by the Fox News host's payoff to a California woman who claims he sexually assaulted her while both of them were intoxicated at a 2017 conservative conference, and a former colleague said she expects more damaging revelations to come out.
"Pete Hegseth has many problems, in addition to what you just said," said Julie Roginsky, a Democratic strategist and former Fox News contributor. "Pete Hegseth, when he was at Princeton, published an article that said that women who are raped while they're passed out actually, that's not really can't consent, if they're not aware of what's happening to them, that's not rape.
"I mean, this is somebody who's going to be in charge of a military that has had massive sexual assault scandals, to be very clear, on both sides of the aisle. This is something that people have been looking into. Senators on both sides of the aisle [know] it's a problem, and if you speak to women who've served in the military, they say it's a question of not if, but when they will be sexually assaulted."
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Hegseth's background also makes him a national security risk, Roginsky said.
"His own personal life and his failure to disclose certain details of that to the White House and to others is really ripe as an intelligence compromised human being," she said. "I mean, the bottom line is this is exactly the kind of person that should not be serving in a national security capacity, because this is the kind of person who has things that he doesn't want coming out, that our enemies are probably already aware of. Surely there is somebody in the Trump organization and the Trump orbit who doesn't have sexual harassment issues that they can put into this job. It does not need to be Pete Hegseth."
Tricia McLaughlin, who served in the first Trump administration, pointed out that a woman had accused president Joe Biden of raping her in 1993.
"I have to note, though, our current commander in chief Joe Biden has sexual assault allegations against him, [and] he is the leader of our country, he's the leader of the military," McLaughlin said. "So we can go through this all day, but there [are] multiple people who face these allegations, whether they be true or not. We need to make sure that there's sound investigations."
Roginsky interrupted to say she was missing the point, arguing that Hegseth's failure to disclose his past behavior to the Trump team was a genuine liability, and noted that Biden's accuser had briefly moved to Russia.
"[Biden accuser] Tara Reade is now living in Moscow working for Vladimir Putin," said Roginsky, who emigrated to the U.S. from Russia as a child. "So I think we understand where that's coming from, but, look, this is a Republican woman at a Republican conference who accused Pete Hegseth of this. This is not some Democratic deep state plant."
McLaughlin argued that the alleged assault took place eight years ago and didn't result in charges against Hegseth, but Roginsky said the woman's accusations rang true in her experience with him.
"Listen, I worked with Pete Hegseth at Fox and, let me tell you something, Pete Hegseth has issues above and beyond this that need to be examined," Roginsky said, "because Pete Hegseth has a problem where he goes out and gets drunk, and that's also not something that we need necessarily need in our Department of Defense, and the person leading our military. So I would just say I like Pete on a personal level, [but] surely there are people who are more qualified than he is."
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