Hegseth in the Hot Seat

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New York Times Games subscribers get full access to all our games and features. Subscribe now at nytimes.com/games for a special offer. From New York Times, I'm Mick of a Barrel. This is the day. In back-to-back hearings that ended on Thursday, Pete Higgs-F went before Congress for

“the first time in a year to answer for a war in a wrong that's reached a stalemate,”

in a management style that is caused controversy after controversy at the Pentagon. Today, my colleague, Eric Schmidt, takes us inside his testimony. It's Friday. May 1st.

Eric, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Michael. Let me start by asking as a reporter who covers the military and the Pentagon and the war in Iran. How are you thinking about this hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee as it was about to begin on Thursday morning?

What in your mind were the stakes of Pete Higgs-F, the defense secretary, giving this testimony at this particular moment? So, the stakes really couldn't have been larger, Michael. Once a year, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff come up to Congress and testify, basically they're asking for money.

They want to get their budget approved. And this year's budget is a biggie.

It's almost $1.5 trillion, while the largest budget request ever, some $500 million more than

this year's budget. And this is to do everything from replenish munitions stockpiles to rebuild the Navy to construct a new anti-missile system called Golden Dome. So, this is all kind of part and parcel of this budget request.

“But remember, it's been a year since he's had to testify before Congress and there's been”

so many things that have happened in that year. The military has seized the leader of Venezuela and brought him to the United States. He's fired dozens of generals and admirals, many of them women and minorities, so he didn't think cut mustard in his Pentagon. And it's also landing it's a very important time because obvious we're two months into

the Iran War. Of course, he's also kick reporters out of the Pentagon, so he doesn't really have real news conferences anymore. So, there has been very little public accountability for a wide range of kind of operational and programmatic and budget issues that he has done.

And there have been very controversial and he just hasn't really had to answer this and this would be the first time where he's going to have to face pointed questions from congressional Democrats and some Republicans who have questioned what he's doing. Right, so on its face, this is a perfunctory budget hearing and the budget request is huge, but you know, it's annual.

But you're saying what this is really about, is that for the first time the Secretary of Defense arguably the most controversial Secretary of Defense in our lifetime is going to be challenged and held accountable under oath for all the things that he has done since pretty much he was confirmed to the job. That's right.

Well, with that in mind, take us into this hearing room on Thursday morning and set that scene. We are meeting today to review the Pentagon's FY27 budget request. So hexethis seated facing this array of senators. Well, Mr. Chairman, ranking member reads senators, thank you for the opportunity to testify

in support of President Trump's historic, as you said, Mr. Chairman, $1.5 trillion fiscal year, $27 budget for the Department of War. And he starts by making his case for why they should be giving him and the Department of Defense, such a large budget. The President's budget request reflects the urgency of the moment, addressing both the

deferment of long-standing problems as well as positioning our forces for the current and future fights. But then he turns and he starts to address the big issue in the room, of course, which is the Iran war.

President Trump has the courage, has had unlike other presidents to ensure that Iran never

gets a nuclear weapon and that their nuclear blackmail never succeeds.

The biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans. Basically calling congressional Democrats and some Republicans defeatist for criticizing the military's campaign and President Trump's overall effort in Iran after just two short months.

Defeatists from the cheap seats who two months in seek to undermine the incredible efforts

that have been undertaken and the historic nature of taking on a 47-year threat with the courage no other President has had. Right. And says that they are a greater enemy in this moment than Iran itself. That's right.

Basically the adversary here is at home and why can't you see Democrats and even some negative Republicans?

“Why can't you see what a great job the military has done?”

And this is the only President bold enough to take on such a threat. And this essentially serves as a pre-buddle to any tough questions he's going to get about this war in this area. That's right.

But the tough questions from Republicans never really come.

Their statements are more of tremendous support for this budget that's long overdue. This $1.5 trillion request is chock-full of important programs and initiatives that are absolutely necessary. They can't believe what a terrific secretary Hexeth is and how great a job he's been doing over these last several months.

I want to turn out an operation if it fury. It's been a smashing military success. They praised his conduct in the war in Iran. They praised the operation that snatched President Maduro from Venezuela. You're the best that we've had since I've been in Washington.

What you've done to restore readiness. A whole raft of things. They just show that they believe the Pentagon is in the best hands possible. Secretary Hexeth, you're doing a great job. Right.

And quite simply, you're great, the war in Iran is going pretty great. And that stands out at least to me because Congressional Republicans have not avoided asking the rest of Trump's cabinet pretty tough questions in hearings. I'm thinking about the pointed inquiries directed at Christy Knome, the Homeland Security Secretary, or former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In fact, those hearings led in part to their ouster, by President Trump, but on arguably the most urgent topic of the second term, the war, it's fall out. They really fall in line. They really do. You don't hear any criticism about the war in Iran or pretty much anything else.

Right. But that was not the story of Democrats on this committee quite obviously. No, the Democrats came loaded for bear, Mr. Secretary. This was stuck. They come after Hexeth, and just say, and look, the United States has not met its goals

here. Iran's hotline regime remains in place. The Iranian still have highly enriched uranium. They still have thousands of missiles and drones.

“And most important, the straight-up war moves is closed.”

They also are controlling the straight-up or moves and choking off the economy for the globe. Right. The illegal war is driving up costs, undermining readiness, and alienating our allies. And then there are a number of other Senate Democrats, including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who say to Hexeth, you are so out of touch.

I don't know if you fully appreciate how much the American people do not support this war. That you have no idea how unpopular this war is with my constituents back home.

First of all, this war is costing so much money, over $25 billion already estimates a billion

dollars a day, and they're feeling it every single day at the gas pump with higher prices for both fuel, for diesel, for gasoline for their cars. They're also feeling it with higher grocery costs, and they're exhausted. They are truly exhausted. That this is just a war with no seaming and with no real upside to it, as far as her constituents

can tell, and you don't seem to know what you're doing.

“Why do you continue to prosecute a war that the American people aren't behind?”

Hexeth pushes back against these critics, and Senator, when I talk to Americans, and especially when I talk to the troops, they are grateful for a president who has the courage to take on this threat after 47 years of what Iran has done to him. I'm just saying that there's really no price you can put on the security that President Trump's campaign against Iran is going to provide.

So the question I would ask to you and to others is, what is the cost of a nuclear armed Iran? What is the cost of the American people, if the world's most dangerous regime has a nuclear weapon? There's no price on that.

That long-term security is a looted president after President, Republicans and Democrats for decades, is now within our grasp.

but the long-term security that it buys is immeasurable.

“This is a defined mission set that we have had great success in pursuing against any”

government enemy who sees nuclear weapons. And I'm proud of the opportunity to remind Americans that they will be in it as well. I'm proud of the opportunity to remind Americans that they will be in it as well. You don't care. But the American people and the American people are quite smart.

They understand and see through spin. They know that a regime that says death to America that seeks nuclear weapons and the ability to live. I'm curious about what else stood out to you about how these Senate Democrats talk to Hexeth about the war in Iran.

Well, the biggest issue for Democrats and they kept asking about it was how long will this war last, and will you ever come to us here on Capitol Hill for authorization? There's a big debate going on right now because as of Friday, there's a 60-day limit from the start of hostilities under which time the president either has to withdraw American forces or come to Congress and seek authorization for this war.

We're right at the 60-day deadline. And Senator Tim Kane of Virginia, particular presses this point, is the president intending to either seek congressional authorization for the war in Iran or send us the legally required certification that he needs an additional 30 days to remove US forces from the war. And Hexeth kind of dodges the question.

Ultimately, I would defer to the White House and White House counsel on that.

However, we are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses. But ultimately comes back with an answer.

“I think that stuns a lot of the lawmakers and basically says, you know what?”

This doesn't really apply to us and we don't need to comply with this because we're in the midst of a ceasefire. He's basically saying this 60-day clock, it's in law, has stopped. And so we don't really have to worry about that right now. So you know, okay, well, I do not believe the statute would support that.

I think the 60 days runs maybe tomorrow and Kane and I think others are just amazed that somehow this novel legal interpretation is suddenly surfaced in the middle of this hearing. But that's, you know, Secretary Hexeth said it and he's sticking to it. I mean, is he right or is this skepticism for the Democrats? And I think the legal scholars we talked to said, no, that's not correct.

But obviously this hasn't been tested in this particular format. So Friday is the deadline, we'll see what the White House decides to do. But that seems to be the legal basis that they're now resting on that they don't have to meet this deadline, at least not yet.

“And so that was another point, it just kind of shows, and in the Democrats, if you kind of”

how Cavalier the administration is entered into this war, they thought this was going to be over so quickly, they don't even have to worry about this 60 day limit.

We're never going to approach this because the Iranian regime will fall, everything will

work out, just fine. And of course, that hasn't happened and suddenly, here's one more unintended consequence that they're having to do with, which is that they're triggering the 60 day need for congressional war authorization. That's right, exactly.

Okay, well, those were the questions, Democrats asked, headset about Iran after the break, I want to talk about what happened when the Democrats on this committee confronted with the headset about headset himself. Some songs that I've written, I started on the piano that happened with all in one of a Christmas as you.

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That's right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, brought up a broader question of whether

or not, Pentagon officials, military officials are using insider information for their own personal financial gain. But someone is profiting off Trump's war, insiders who know what's going on and who place bets on that inside information. On March 23rd, just recently, just a U.S. special forces soldier who is arrested for using

information that he gained is being a part of the operation to seize President Maduro Venezuela to make some $400,000 predictions market. It looks like insiders have been making out like bandits using secret information about the war. So that's kind of floating over all this and there have been other reports of money being

made by unseen people for other military operations, including war and Iran. Not a single person has been charged and she's trying to drill down with the secretary

“to say, is this something that you're paying attention to?”

Senator, I'm more than focused on doing my job and ensuring we execute properly, which thankfully under this. And hexoth kind of looks at her like, physically saying, this isn't really my department, right? What I'm saying is we're focused on our mission of executing for the American people

and what happens in markets is not embedding markets, is not something we're involved in. It happens. And she said, wait a minute. This is your Pentagon, right?

Aren't you a little bit concerned that all this kind of a classified operational information, they might be using it for their own personal gain? Even if the information may be coming from insiders in your office? Senator, it's not something we're involved in at all. And of course, we take operational security at every level.

Very seriously. In fact, no one's taken operational security more seriously than us if you were. Right. And I have to admit, I was a little bit. Confused about where she was heading.

“Well, I think what she's driving at is a story in the media a couple of weeks ago about”

Hexoth himself. The financial times reported that your broker tried to buy hundreds of shares in a black rock fund invested in defense companies just before the war began.

Was he basically betting on defense contractors or putting an investing money his own money

into defense contractors that would obviously pay off for him, right? Was he profiting from the war? Exactly. That entire story as false has been from the beginning and was made up of a whole cloth. And he adamantly rejected this.

I'll give it to you as a big, fat, negative. Then let me ask you a second question, is your broker getting your personal sign off on any investment in individual, bigger, fat, or negative? It just seems to be completely outraged that she would suggest this kind of thing. This is kind of one of these new things that's floating around and whether you're soldier

or somebody on the inside and the Pentagon, you're suddenly, you can use some of this information in a way that would actually gain you a lot of money if you can hide your tracks well enough. And that's what she's getting at. Are you worried about this as a potential problem?

And just to clear up, is there any evidence that we're aware of here at the time that Hexoth did seek to profit from a war he's overseeing as a secretary of defense? No, there's no evidence at all that we've seen or heard of. Got it. Important.

Well, let me turn to how other Democrats question Hexoth's management of the Pentagon domestic liquid. So, Dr. Slot, can I think you are next? Thank you. One of the questions that most struck me came from Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who wanted to understand

what orders Hexoth would follow when it comes to the military and elections. Right. That can democrat from Michigan, former Defense Department and CIA official.

And she basically is asking a question.

It's a lot of people's minds. The question I have for you, though, is future looking. And it's our 2026 elections. Given the recent deployment of US National Guard troops to places like Los Angeles and Minneapolis and all the chaos that was called there, there are a lot of people worried that Trump administration

in the Pentagon under Hexoth would deploy troops either national guard or active duty troops to polling places in the elections in November. And we know that in 2020, he wrote an executive order that he didn't sign that said to

“the US military, to the Secretary of Defense, you should go and seize ballots and voting”

machines. And Slotkin zeros in on this because that would be illegal. If the president who regrets not signing that executive order to the then sectF in 2020 asks

up for the Constitution and say no or will you salute and do his bidding?

And Hexoth gets this kind of smirk on his face and says, well, again, that's the most important

thing. It's what's happening. It's not another gotcha hypothetical, which is your special. It's not that we had a little bit. You're trying to get me into a gotcha question here.

You're just playing to the cameras with that kind of thing. Tell the American people, will you deploy the uniform military to our polls to collect voter roles or machines?

“Are you accusing me of performing because you're performing for cable news right now?”

No. But Mr. Secretary of Defense, we have a-- It's a hypothetical. Right. Only after the chairman of the committee, our Republican encourages him after slogcans

time is up to actually answer the question. You're right. Do you have a response to that portion of the question, Mr. Secretary? I've never been ordered to do anything illegal and I won't. That's what you're saying.

Thank you for that saying. Thank you for the answer. Right.

But he never ultimately says, no, I won't follow an order from the president to get involved

through the military in the elections. Yeah. No, he doesn't.

“Finally, there's a really important exchange about the very idea of descent and the growing”

sense which Eric you had mentioned in the beginning of our conversation when it comes to how Hexeth has treated the media that this Secretary of Defense is not really open to descent, not really interested in being challenged, whether that's from the news media or even from Congress. You're right.

And he is definitely in the cap of you, they're with us or you're against us. There's no gray area in the middle here where it's, we can agree to disagree on these kind of issues. You keep doubling down on this phrase. And this comes up in an exchange with Jackie Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada who is asking

Hexeth why he uses a term. You compare journalists, you compare us, you compare so many to Pharisees. Pharisees in the New Testament who criticize Jesus of Nazareth for performing miracles. It's a problematic and historically weaponized term that cast Jewish communities as hypocritical or morally corrupt.

You doubled down again and set it. And she's just taken aback by this.

“How do you justify using this language as Secretary of Defense?”

Or does it matter? It's a heart historically, heart full term. Senator, I feel like it's a pretty accurate term for folks who don't see the plank in their

own eye and always want to see what's wrong with an operation as opposed to the historic

success of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. So I stand by it. You stand by calling people Pharisees, sir, I cannot stand for that. That is wrong. It is not respectful to people and I expect anyone who is in leadership in our country

to be respectful and use respectful terms and not be an anti-Semite. And it kind of circles back to the comments he made at the beginning of the hearing where he talks about critics of the Iran campaign as reckless nasaers and defeatists. And again, there seems to be no room for an intellectual argument over this kind of thing. This concludes today's hearing.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for their testimony. For the information of members, questions for the record would be due to the committee with the two business days of the conclusion of the hearing we are adjourned. It's very striking as somebody I've covered defense secretaries now for 35 years. Out of one, it's like Donald Rumsfeld.

But it was never cast in a sense of the media or the Congress is an outright enemy. If you're coming down on the wrong side of this administration or this Pentagon or challenging Secretary Hexette personally, he's not going to back down. And in fact, you're now on his enemy's list. It seems.

Right. And to even ask a certain kind of question to him is to be an enemy akin to Iran itself. That seems to be the way he sees things. And it's all done with kind of, he looks at lawmakers who ask these questions very suspiciously oftentimes with kind of a smile in his face like, ah, this game that we're in here.

And there's very little difference that you normally see at these kind of hearings where they kind of bite their tongue and say, yes, Senator, yes, Congressman, and move on. It's just, it's very confrontational as we've seen with other members of the Trump cabinet. And there's a kind of irony to this, which you know very well, Eric, because we've

his confirmation hearings, Pete Hexette's appeal to President Trump and in theory to folks

“in the Pentagon when he was nominated was his unusual willingness to criticize previous military”

leaders to say that past folks who occupied the same seat, he now does had blown it, that they had gotten America in bad wars forever wars, that they had ruined the culture of the military. And now he has that job and as hearings like this demonstrate, he is not willing to endure

the kind of criticism that he so forcefully delivered and that in large part, maybe responsible

for why he now has the job. Absolutely.

“In many ways, he captured President Trump's attention as a Fox News host for criticizing the”

very senior military leaders who we once served. Is an officer in both Afghanistan and Iraq, right? And basically saying, I am part of this generation of men and women who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I know the mistakes that were made, I live them day in day out and I've come back to fix them and to correct them and with President's Trump

and promoter were well on our way of doing that. But I think what the hearings this week showed was that at least in the secretaries telling,

he can never be wrong, he can never be challenged the way he challenged civilian and

uniform leaders in the years past and anyone who challenges that needs to be taken down. Iraq, thank you very much, we appreciate it. We'll be right back.

“Here's what else you need to know today.”

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to end a record 76 day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. After weeks of fighting over a compromised bill, House Republicans endorsed legislation that will fund all of the agency except for its immigration enforcement operations. Those operations will be funded through separate legislation.

The shutdown began as an act of protest by Democrats over the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, which resulted in the death of two American citizens. And, in a major blow to the Democratic Party leaders who backed her, Maine's governor Janet Mills has ended her primary campaign for U.S. Senate, considering that she no longer has the money or the momentum to compete against a progressive newcomer, Graham Platner.

Her exit paves the way for Platner to become the Democratic nominee against Republican Susan Collins in a race that Democrats must win to regain control of the Senate in this year's midterms. These episode was produced by Eric Kruppky, Shannon Lynn and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Rachel Kruster and Chris Haxel.

And teens' music by Dan Powell and Mary on the side are theme music is by Wonderley. That's it for the Daily, I'm Michael Barrel, see you on Sunday.