Support Our Journalism

Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Politics National News World Economy Lifestyle Store

Tag: questions

The Questions Hegseth Refused To Answer At Confirmation Hearing

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial and, many say, unqualified nominee to lead the millions of people serving in the U.S. Armed Forces and oversee the Pentagon’s $842 billion budget, refused to give straight answers to numerous questions posed by senators during his short, four-hour-and-fifteen-minute confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Democrats on the committee had requested multiple rounds of questions so they could follow up with the nominee, a former Fox News weekend host who has been accused of sexual assault, “aggressive drunkenness,” sexism, mismanaging two veterans’ non-profits, and an apparent embrace of Christian nationalism. Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) refused, despite precedent with multiple nominees before the committee over many years. Wicker also refused to allow the FBI’s report on Hegseth to be made available to all members of the committee.

Hegseth, at times combative, frequently battled Democratic Senators, talking over them and refusing to answer numerous questions, while often praising Donald Trump — and invoking his name as a shield. Questions he did answer often came from Republicans on the committee. They included questions like, How many genders are there? How many pushups can you do? What do you love about your wife?

But Hegseth refused to give straight answers to a large number of basic questions, such as: Would you submit to an expanded FBI background check? Agree to use the military to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? In each of your weddings you’ve pledged to be faithful to your wife? Should allegations of spousal abuse be disqualifying?

One question Hegseth initially refused to answer was what his use of the apparent slur, “jag off” means.

“I don’t think I need to, sir,” he told the ranking member, Jack Reed, when politely asked.

“Why not?” Reed, surprised, asked.

“Because the men and women watching understand,” Hegseth replied.

He only explained it when Reed reminded him that “perhaps some of my colleagues don’t understand.”

“It would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters,” Hegseth finally said. (JAG is Judge Advocate General, a military attorney.)

Hegseth’s history of comments against women and LGBTQ service members is well-documented. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly pressed him on his beliefs on women in the military.

“Will you commit to preserving the Women, Peace, and Security Law at DOD and including in your budget the requisite funding to continue to restore and resource these programs throughout the DOD?” Senator Shaheen asked, referring to this law.

“I, Senator, I will commit to reviewing that program and ensuring it aligns with America First, national security priorities, meritocracy, lethality and readiness. And if it advances American interests, it’s something we would advance,” Hegseth smugly replied. “If it doesn’t, it’s something we would look at.”

“Well since former President Trump signed it into the law, I hope that he agrees with you,” Shaheen responded.

— (@)

At one point, when Hegseth grew combative, he talked over Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), forcing her to repeatedly say, “I’m not hearing the answer to my question.” He then refused to answer if he would “resign if you drink on the job, which is a 24/7 position?”

— (@)

Senator Hirono also asked Hegseth if he would comply with an order from the Commander-in-Chief, who will be Donald Trump, to shoot protestors. He refused to give a straight answer.

“In 2020, then President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the legs in downtown D.C., an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. Would you carry out such an order from President Trump?” she asked.

Hegseth launched into what appeared to be a defense of Trump’s order, but would not answer, leading Hirono to say, “Sounds to me that you would comply with such an order, you will shoot protesters in the leg.”

Asked, again by Hirono, if he would “carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, and, “comply with an order to take over the Panama Canal,” Hegseth again refused to give a straight answer.

“Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful Commander-in-Chief —” Hegseth replied.

“We’re not talking about the election,” Hirono reminded him.

“Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand,” Hegseth, again lavishing praise on Trump, replied, again not giving a straight answer.

In a similar vein, Hegseth refused to give a straight answer to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who asked if there are any orders a commander-in-chief could give that would be unlawful and violate the Constitution.

“I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders,” he exclaimed.

— (@)

He also refused to give a straight answer when asked if he has been in conversations about using active duty military within the U.S., and using active duty military in U.S.-based detention camps.

Hegseth’s back-and-forth with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), however, were among the most damaging, as veterans’ advocate Paul Rieckhoff noted.

— (@)

At one point, Hegseth refused to answer whether spousal abuse would be disqualifying for someone to be secretary of defense, after refusing to say he would release his former wives from NDAs if there were any.

“Did you ever engage in any acts of physical violence against any of your wives?” Kaine asked.

“Senator, absolutely not,” Hegseth replied.

“But you would agree with me that if someone had committed physical violence against the spouse, that would be disqualifying to serve as Secretary of Defense, correct?” Kaine continued.

“Senator, absolutely not have I ever done that,” Hegseth stressed.

“You would agree that would be a disqualifying offense, would you not?” Kaine pressed.

“Senator, you’re talking about a hypothetical,” Hegseth responded, again refusing to answer.

“I don’t think it’s a hypothetical. Violence against spouses occurs every day,” Kaine insisted. And if you as a leader are not capable of saying that physical violence against a spouse should be a disqualifying fact, for being Secretary [of Defense] of the most powerful nation in the world, you demonstrating an astonishing lack of judgment.”

— (@)

The liberal Super PAC American Bridge put out this clip, saying, “Pete Hegseth refuses to say he doesn’t support waterboarding, torture, or abandoning the Geneva Conventions. This guy has dangerous ideas that have no place at the Department of Defense.”

— (@)

In that exchange with Senator Angus King (I-VT), Hegseth also declared, “what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand decisions over to international bodies.”

And when asked to give just true or false answers to questions about numerous alleged instances of intoxication, Hegseth repeatedly replied, “anonymous smears.”

— (@)

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Some Questions For Dick Cheney

Book-tour media rules for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is out promoting his new memoir (The following is a list of interview questions that Mr. Cheney has agreed to answer forthrightly.):

1. What’s the title of your new book? Do you think you’ll sell more than Tina Fey?

2. Did you enjoy cowriting it with your daughter Liz?

3. Is Liz a good writer? Does she work on a Mac or a PC? Which of you two was in charge of spell-checking?

4. How’s that dog of yours? Isn’t it a yellow Lab? Are they crazy or what?

5. Do you and former President Bush chat very often? Did you send him an early copy of your book? Maybe an audio disk, or a download for his Kindle?

6. How’s your health these days? Did you get to do some trout fishing this summer in Wyoming? All things considered, do you prefer rainbows or cutthroats?

7. Do you miss being the second-most powerful person in the whole world? What’s the toughest thing about retirement? Did they give you a decent health plan or are there, like, ridiculous co-pays?

8. Who’s your favorite commentator on Fox News? And what’s your most enduring achievement as vice president?

9. On a scale of one to 100, how dangerous to the future of America and the free world is President Obama? How long would it take our country to be overrun by jihadists and North Koreans if a Republican isn’t elected to the White House in 2012?

10. Can we take a peek at your portable heart machine?

(The following is a list of questions that Mr. Cheney might answer partially, with varying degrees of deception, or not at all.)

1. In your memoir, you seem resentful toward Colin Powell. Is this because he was an actual soldier with leadership experience in the first Gulf War and possibly he knew what he was talking about, whereas you never put on a uniform in your life and had no freaking clue?

2. Would you be willing to go on the Jay Leno show and let yourself be waterboarded if you thought it would sell more books? What if Condoleezza agreed to get in the tank, too?

3. Why do you suppose nobody else in the Bush administration wanted to spontaneously bomb Syria except you? At that point, did any of your close friends or family members suggest an extended vacation? A brain scan?

4. During all those White House meetings about Iraq, did anybody ever mention what would happen to our nation’s economy if a war were launched at the same time taxes were being slashed? If so, how many seconds did it take you to change the subject?

5. Did you have trouble keeping a straight face when you kept insisting that Saddam Hussein had an “established relationship with al-Qaida?” Was it satisfying to know that many Americans were misled into believing that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks?

6. Any thoughts on those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction?

7. Why did you keep ranting about WMDs years after the CIA and the military had given up looking? Was this a period when your medication was being adjusted, or were you just spuriously trying to justify the U.S. invasion?

8. Speaking of which, remember when you went on TV and predicted that American troops would be “greeted as liberators”? Is it possible you were drunk at the time?

9. And, oh yeah, remember when you declared that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes?” Way back in 2005? Of all the dumb things to come out of your mouth, where does that whopper rank?

10. Does the number 4,465 hold any special meaning? Would you be surprised to learn that’s how many American troops have been killed in Iraq since the occupation? Just out of curiosity, have you taken a stroll through Arlington National Cemetery lately?

11. Finally, Mr. Vice President, when is the last time you were right about anything?

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.)

Why Some Workers Aren’t Covered By Social Security

Q: Hey Tom — I like your style. You’ve helped clear up so many of the false stories out there about Social Security. And I realized I might have been spreading one of them!

I’ve complained for years about members of Congress excluding themselves from Social Security and setting up cushy retirement plans like none other. But one of my friends told me I was wrong. Then we got to talking about other groups not covered by Social Security, like railroad workers. I want you to set the record straight. Can you print a list of all the groups of employees in this country who are not covered by Social Security?

A: You’ll learn in a minute why I can’t give you such a list. But I can tell you now that your friend is right: Members of Congress aren’t on it. They do pay into Social Security. Here’s the story about how Social Security coverage has changed over the years.

When Social Security was born in the 1930s, most people in this country didn’t have pension plans, and a government program like Social Security was necessary for them. So just about everyone who worked for wages was covered by Social Security from day one. (Self-employed people came under Social Security’s umbrella a decade or so later.)

But some groups of employees already had pension plans in place. The two largest were railroad workers, who were covered by the railroad retirement system, and federal government employees (including members of Congress), who were covered by the civil service retirement system. Both of those pension plans had been around long before Social Security started. So it was decided to exclude these two large groups from Social Security.

In addition, Congress felt that it would be unconstitutional to force a federal government pension plan — Social Security — on state and local governments. So employees of state and local government entities were given the option of joining Social Security. Most did. About 80 percent of all such public employees became part of Social Security.

So that’s what happened when Social Security started in the 1930s. Nobody thought twice about any of these decisions, because they made sense.

But then, over the years, people started griping about the fact that members of Congress and other high-level government officials were not covered by Social Security. Just as silly and false Web rumors about Social Security exist today, stories began to circulate in the pre-Internet world that Congress had specifically excluded itself from Social Security in order to set its members up with a nice “Cadillac retirement plan.” Eventually, simply too much political pressure came to bear on Congress for it to remain outside of Social Security.

So in 1983, as part of a package of major Social Security-reform legislation, Congress passed a law mandating that all of its members, the president and vice president, all other high-level government leaders, and all federal employees hired after 1983 would be covered by Social Security.

Today, that leaves railroad workers as the only major nationwide group of employees still not covered by Social Security.

You asked for a list of other groups not covered. But that would be almost impossible. There are thousands of them. All are various state and local employee groups around the country (again, about 20 percent of the total). Those groups could be anything from a small sewer district of maybe 10 employees to a large group of thousands of employees, such as teachers. In fact, the largest groups of non-Social Security covered workers tend to be teachers — in states like California, Texas and Ohio. Also, many law enforcement agencies in these same (and some other) states are not covered by Social Security.

Today, around the country as a whole, about 93 percent of workers are covered by Social Security.

People still gripe about members of Congress and their pensions. They do get a pension that supplements their Social Security. But that’s the way the system is supposed to work.

For example, my wife was a county librarian in a state that was covered by Social Security. She gets Social Security, and she gets a pension from the county where she worked to supplement it. My neighbor worked for a large, national corporation. He gets Social Security, and he collects a nice pension from his former employer to supplement it. But as we all know, most company pensions are getting to be a thing of the past, replaced — if they are replaced at all — by 401(k) plans. That’s not the way things were supposed to work — but it’s the way this country’s retirement systems have evolved.

And one final point: As part of any upcoming reforms to Social Security, one commonly discussed proposal is what’s called “universal coverage.” That essentially means everyone in the country would be covered by Social Security. It’s an easy political fix, because it impacts only a relatively small group of people (the 7 percent of the population not covered by Social Security). But folks who work for state and local government agencies not participating in Social Security are worried that they’ll be dragged kicking and screaming into the federal pension system.

To ease their minds a bit, I would wager that any push for universal coverage will impact only newly hired employees.

If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has the answer. Contact him at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Debt Ceiling Questions, Answered

A helpful primer for those who haven’t been following too closely:

Q. This sounds like an odd system. Do you mean that Congress can pass a budget that requires borrowing, and then argue later about whether to approve that borrowing?

A. That’s right. The system goes back to World War I, when Congress first put a limit on federal debt. The limit was part of a law that allowed the Treasury to issue Liberty Bonds to help pay for the war. The law was intended to give the Treasury greater discretion over borrowing by eliminating the need for Congress to approve each new issuance of debt. Over the years the limit has been raised repeatedly, to $14.3 trillion today from roughly $43 billion in 1940. But outside observers have noted that the failure to make increases in the debt limit part of the regular budget process can be risky.

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

World

        About The National Memo
    
The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
TAGS

Created By

RebelMouse

About Masthead Terms of Service Privacy Statement Advertise Contact

Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

The Questions Hegseth Refused To Answer At Confirmation Hearing

Some Questions For Dick Cheney

Debt Ceiling Questions, Answered

Shop our Store

Constitution Cork Coaster

Democracy Mug

Make America Think Again Hat

Constitution Rocks Glass

Headlines

Trump And Melania Booed 'Mercilessly' At Kennedy Center Opening Night

Veterans Blast Trump Over 'Politicized' Military Event At Fort Bragg

Global Approval Of US Plummets As Trump Imposes Tariffs, Attacks Allies

Fox Lies Obscure The Facts About Trump-Newsom Phone Dispute

Editor's Blog

Besides Food Dyes, What Endangers Children's Health? Bobby's Hypocrisy

At First HHS Press Conference, Kennedy Enrages Autism Families With Falsehoods

Brilliant Tariff Strategy Or Market Manipulation? We Report, You Decide

In Trump's Hands, Absolute Power Brings Inevitable Catastrophe

Corona Virus