We need to hear from Dan Sullivan about Pete Hegseth

So far all that Sen. Dan Sullivan has said about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, is some gibberish about how Hegseth has a great “bio” and he’s focused on “lethality and peace through strength.”

Lethality is the capacity to cause death or great harm. According to Sullivan, the U.S. military has not done enough to improve its ability to kill and injure people with Biden as president. Sullivan wants more killing power.

“What I’ve been focused on is the policies that I’m quite confident he will focus on and implement, and in a big contrast to the current administration, which has not focused on lethality,” Sullivan told the Washington Post.

Hegseth is unqualified for Secretary of Defense and he doesn’t have a great “bio,” but he is a Trump sycophant and Trump enjoys watching him on TV. Hegseth will do whatever Trump wants, as will Sullivan.

Tom Nichols, a professor emeritus at the Naval War College, has a clear view of the risks to the nation and the world, one that Sullivan lacks.

“He’s going for the trifecta of putting nakedly loyalist, unqualified people into these jobs as a way of saying to everyone in those departments, I’m in control. I run these. You’re going to do what I say. And forget the Constitution. Forget the law. Forget everything except loyalty to Donald Trump,” Nichols told The Atlantic.

In his quest for total control, Trump is picking cabinet members he expects to deliver, regardless of their qualifications, skills and judgment.

One element of Hegseth’s judgment deals with his behavior toward women.

Other than the usual statement that Hegseth should “not be tried in the press,” Sullivan has had nothing to say about the growing scandal regarding Hegseth and his actions at a 2017 conference that led to a sexual assault complaint, a payment to the woman and a nondisclosure agreement.

Shortly after Sullivan moved to Alaska to become attorney general, he was a founding member of Gov. Sean Parnell’s “Choose Respect” for women campaign, which had a goal not to reduce, but to end domestic violence and sexual assault in Alaska within a decade.

Sullivan took part in a “Real Alaska Men Choose Respect” ad campaign and he made the words “Choose Respect” a standard part of his political career, both in Alaska and then the U.S. Senate.

“We launched the Choose Respect initiative, and soon, posters were being taped on school walls, marches were being held, people began to talk more openly about the issue and, importantly, we held summits to enlist lawyers to provide services for victims and survivors, free of charge,” Sullivan said in 2019.

He helped lead the fight to mark October 1 as national Choose Respect Day.

Which brings us to Pete Hegseth and what Sullivan says is his great biography.

In August 2017, while Hegseth was still married to his second wife, he fathered a child with a co-worker at Fox News. His second wife filed for divorce that month.

So he had a two-month-old baby when he got drunk at a California Federation for Republican Women conference in October 2017 and had a sexual encounter with a 30-year-old woman. He says the woman pursued him and was the aggressor. He later paid the woman and had her sign a nondisclosure agreement.

A 22-page police report released this week contradicts key points in Hegseth’s version of events. An emergency room nurse first reported the allegation that the woman believed she had been assaulted.

So much for his great bio.

Meanwhile, the Bulwark reports that Sen. Lisa Murkowski was among the small number of Republican senators who rejected Matt Gaetz as attorney general and led Trump to tell Gaetz to withdraw.

Sullivan had said he didn’t know enough about Gaetz to offer an opinion, but that Trump deserves to get the cabinet he wants.

Choose Respect takes on a different meaning when it comes to Trump: Sullivan chooses to respect whatever Trump wants.

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