That a coordinated hit job against Trump Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth is taking place is without question. All manner of character attacks have played out in desperate fashion. He is said to be a white supremacist sympathizer for having a tattoo of the long-established religious symbol of The Jerusalem Cross. We were told he is warmonger because he once sold soap in the shape of a grenade. Yes, seriously.
The imbalanced nature of it all is summed up ridiculously; Hegseth is said to be unacceptable because he is merely a television pundit, so say the expert television pundits.
Now, the press has stepped up the attacks, with a new round of accusations being shared across the spectrum. NBC News came out with its scathing report where ten current and former staffers at Fox News have stated that Hegseth would regularly arrive to the network inebriated, as well as a number of other infractions. This has been spread widely and wildly across the news landscape despite some rather glaring specifics.
These ten “sources” are all nameless, and for the most part, we do not know in what capacity they were involved with Pete’s vocational activities. Now, while anonymous sources are sometimes a valid tool for reporting, what stands out here is that there is no shortage of people offering a counterpoint to these accusations, and those folks are actually willing to go on the record under their own names. Rachel Campos-Duffy, Will Cain, Dr. Nicole Saphier, and Lisa Boothe are among those willing to come forward and call out this smear attempt.
I have routinely sat on the couch with @PeteHegseth for 8 years. Not once did I suspect he had consumed anything other than an egg sandwich and coffee before going on air. pic.twitter.com/vjDQUpV9il
— Nicole Saphier, MD (@NBSaphierMD) December 4, 2024
Not one of these sources for NBC News has a job title listed. It was claimed by the network that they wanted to remain nameless out of fear of retribution; why would that be a concern for those no longer working at Fox News? Seven of their sources are no longer employed there, yet no one was willing to give their name or even a job description. Meanwhile, those who have gone on the record denying the claims are his close co-hosts who worked side by side with him for years. Yet the press ignores these named and notable sources in order to push the tale told by…who knows who they are?
Even in the NBC report, there is this rather deflating detail provided: None of the sources with whom NBC News has spoken could recall an instance when Hegseth missed a scheduled appearance because he’d been drinking.
Also overlooked was in the section of this report where we receive a lecture that Hegseth’s alleged late-night revelry poses a threat to the job duties of the Secretary of Defense due to the import of needing to be on call for any unplanned emergency outbreak. Do writers Courtney Kube and Chloe Melas think there was no problem in this very matter when current SoD Lloyd Austin went into the hospital in January and never thought to notify anyone?! Austin literally disappeared for three days, and no one thought to notify Congress or the White House during that time.
This selective sourcing is an established pattern in the media environment – taking as gospel the words of unknown and unattributed voices, all while bypassing valid sourcing on the record that refutes the narrative. Look at the completely libelous report from Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic ahead of the election, where he claimed Trump angrily refused to honor in profane and racist fashion a promise to support the funeral expenses of a fallen soldier. The media exploded that story in headline fashion.
They did so despite the fact that those in attendance at the meeting, such as former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, went on the record to say the conversation never took place. More than that, the fallen soldier’s family disputed this, as they lent support to Trump, and their lawyer provided evidence of Goldberg manipulating quotes to fit his storyline.
The press ignored all those on the record to push the fraudulent and anonymous framing. This mirrored the shady tactic of Goldberg from four years prior, where he sold the already debunked claim Trump called fallen soldiers “suckers and losers.” Again, those in attendance of the conversation completely derided the report, but the press ran with the fable nonetheless. To this day there are those repeating this canard as if it were an established fact.
Speaking of that shamed news source, this latest smear attempt is already meeting resistance. Contemptuous never-Trumper David Frum was on “Morning Joe” discussing this latest Hegseth development when he went so far as to say, “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed — so, that’s alarming.” The hosts then clumsily changed the topic, and after a brief exchange on topics, Frum was summarily dismissed from the segment. Moments later, hostess Mika Brzezinski came back on to issue a retraction.
“A little bit earlier in this block, there was a comment made about Fox News, in our coverage about Pete Hegseth and the growing number of allegations about his behavior over the years and possible addiction to alcohol or issues with alcohol,” Brzezinski said. “The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear.
Frum wrote about this exchange on MSNBC in his column in The Atlantic.
After the break, I was asked a follow-up question on a different topic, about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. I did not revert to the earlier discussion, not because I had been warned, but because I had said my piece. I was then told that I was excused from the studio chair.
But if NBC’s reporting — based on interviews with 10 current or former Fox employees — about Hegseth’s alcohol abuse is accurate, many of those same good people have failed to report publicly that their former colleague, appointed to lead the armed forces of the United States, was notorious in their own building for his drinking. That would be a startling and shameful shirking of responsibility on a matter of grave national importance. What’s the appropriate language to call it out?
As it is said, his use of the word “If” is doing the heavy lifting here. Frum is choosing to ignore that those “good people” he refers to did not “fail to report” — they did report. They have said these anonymous claims are utter trash. Little wonder now why Frum was excused from Scar-Joe’s panel on Wednesday.
Frum just serves as the latest example. This type of development is the result of the press chasing their own narratives instead of chasing down the facts. The confirmation bias is strong in this industry; the desire to repair the problems is what is showing as a weak character trait.
