Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, here in Washington, a lot of attention is fixed
Speaker 2: on what's taking place in the Senate today, or more
Speaker 2: specifically the Dirks and Senate Office Building, where the Senate
Speaker 2: Armed Services Committee is currently and still underway, holding the
Speaker 2: confirmation hearing for the Defense Secretary designate Pete Hegseth, who,
Speaker 2: of course has been tapped by President elect Donald Trump
Speaker 2: to lead the Pentagon, an organization with more than three
Speaker 2: million people reporting up and through it, and it's been
Speaker 2: a little contentious at times, perhaps no surprise. He's faced
Speaker 2: very difficult questions from Democrats in regard to a number
Speaker 2: of issues. But he also began the hearing by pleading
Speaker 2: his own case. Here's part of his opening statement.
Speaker 3: Now, it is true and has been acknowledged, that I
Speaker 3: don't have a similar biography to defense secretaries of the
Speaker 3: last thirty years. But as President Trump also told me,
Speaker 3: we've repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the
Speaker 3: right credentials, whether they are retire generals, academics, or defense
Speaker 3: contractor executives. And where has it gotten us, he believes,
Speaker 3: and I humbly agree that it's time to give someone
Speaker 3: with dust on his boots the helm, a change agent,
Speaker 3: someone with no vested interest in certain companies or specific
Speaker 3: programs or approved narratives. My only special interest is the warfighter,
Speaker 3: deterring wars and if called upon, winning wars. By ensuring
Speaker 3: our warriors never enter a fair fight, we let them
Speaker 3: win and we bring them home. Like many of my generation,
Speaker 3: I've been there. I've led troops in combat. I've been
Speaker 3: on patrol for days. I've pulled a trigger down range,
Speaker 3: heard bullets whiz by, flexcuffed insurgents, called in close air support,
Speaker 3: led metavacs, dodged IEDs, pulled out dead bodies, and knelt
Speaker 3: before a battlefield cross. This is not academic for me.
Speaker 3: This is my life. I led then and I will
Speaker 3: lead now.
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in
Speaker 1: prepared remarks. That's how it started, not only trying to
Speaker 1: make the case for his nomination and confirmation, of course,
Speaker 1: but also trying to get ahead of some of the
Speaker 1: more difficult questions that he might be asked. And he's
Speaker 1: been asked all of them, and we've got more to go.
Speaker 1: Here joining us a voice of experience who spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time with this committee and in rooms like these.
Speaker 1: Retired Marine Corps Major General Arnold Prenur, a former staff
Speaker 1: director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the author of
Speaker 1: if Confirmed, An Insider's view of the Senate confirmation process.
Speaker 1: What a perfect voice for today. General has spent some time,
Speaker 1: and we welcome you back to Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, you've been in this room before. How's
Speaker 1: he doing.
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I think he's doing extremely well. I was very impressed
Speaker 5: with this opening statement. As you mentioned, I've been involved
Speaker 5: in the confirmation process for over twelve Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 5: going all the way back to the Ford administration, both
Speaker 5: when I was on the committee, the staff director of
Speaker 5: the committee and then helping various.
Speaker 4: Nominees since leaving government.
Speaker 5: On a pro bono basis, and so most of our
Speaker 5: secretaries of Defense get faced tough questionings. But he certainly
Speaker 5: had a very strong opening statement. I've reviewed all of
Speaker 5: his advanced policy questions. I've listened very carefully to the hearing,
Speaker 5: and he's doing exceedingly.
Speaker 2: Well in my judgment, well and for many of the
Speaker 2: questions he is facing, at least the ones posed by Democrats,
Speaker 2: he's kind of doing so for the first time, as
Speaker 2: multiple Democratic Senators have pointed out, Sir that Hegseth declined
Speaker 2: to meet with them in advance of this hearing, even
Speaker 2: though he was taking meetings with essentially all of the
Speaker 2: Republicans on this committee. Do you think that that was
Speaker 2: a mistake or was it unnecessary in this case when
Speaker 2: he wasn't likely to be able to rely on Democratic
Speaker 2: votes anyway.
Speaker 5: Well, typically the tradition is that nominees, and not just
Speaker 5: for the Secretary of Defense, all out offense nominees, and
Speaker 5: of which there are six in the Department of the Fence.
Speaker 5: So he's going to have a very strong team with
Speaker 5: him if he's confirmed, and I believe he will be confirmed,
Speaker 5: And typically they trying to meet with everybody, but everybody's scheduled.
Speaker 5: I don't have any inside information other than what I
Speaker 5: just turned into hearing today. I know nominees trying to
Speaker 5: meet with everybody. I know for a fact that a
Speaker 5: number of the other nominees, the Secretary of the Navy,
Speaker 5: the Secretary of the Army nominee, they're meeting with both
Speaker 5: sides of the isle. So I don't know what really
Speaker 5: happened here. It's unfortunate if he didn't have a chance
Speaker 5: to meet with some of them. But on the other hand,
Speaker 5: it's not unusual that schedules don't match up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do all seem to be going out of
Speaker 1: their way to say the same thing on that front.
Speaker 1: But general, we'd love for you to bring us behind
Speaker 1: the scenes a bit and into the process. We hear
Speaker 1: a lot about mock hearings and murder boards. What goes
Speaker 1: into preparing someone like Pete Hegseth for a moment like this.
Speaker 1: How much time do you spend with him? How ugly
Speaker 1: does it get when you start looking at their record
Speaker 1: and try to give them a sense of the tough
Speaker 1: questions they're going to get.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I go back and most of the
Speaker 5: sect deeps that I've been involved with, going all the
Speaker 5: way back to Harrold Brown in the cart administration, Cat Weinberger,
Speaker 5: Don rbsfell Less Aspen all got tough questions. So there's
Speaker 5: nothing unusual about that.
Speaker 4: Number two.
Speaker 5: He does take a tremendous amount of preparation. Some of
Speaker 5: the previous secretaries of the Fence that didn't prepare well
Speaker 5: did not do well in their confirmation hearing and frankly,
Speaker 5: they suffered from that when they became even though they
Speaker 5: got confirmed, you know, they did not have a good
Speaker 5: impression in the confirmation hearing. So I would assume, and
Speaker 5: I can tell from just the way he's answering the questions.
Speaker 5: I can tell from all the material supporting material that's
Speaker 5: been provided to the committee. I can tell by reading
Speaker 5: his extensive advanced policy questions. They have done a tremendous
Speaker 5: amount of preparation to get him ready for this hearing.
Speaker 4: But that's appropriate. You need to do that.
Speaker 5: As some people have said, to the fists, Apartments of
Speaker 5: Law just most complex organization in.
Speaker 4: The world, and it's all about war fighting.
Speaker 5: And so I would think that obviously they spend a
Speaker 5: tremendous amount of time with him getting him ready, and
Speaker 5: it shows he's doing a good job.
Speaker 2: So you think general that he's doing a good job
Speaker 2: and arguing that he is in fact qualified to do
Speaker 2: this job, even though he, as has been raised in
Speaker 2: the hearing, he hasn't managed an organization bigger than hundreds
Speaker 2: of people, let alone millions, that he actually hasn't led
Speaker 2: an organizational audit, let alone one that could number in
Speaker 2: the hundreds of billions. Of dollars. I mean, is your
Speaker 2: takeaway from this hearing that Pete Hegseth is firmly qualified
Speaker 2: for this position.
Speaker 5: He's qualified in terms of the things that the Secretary
Speaker 5: of Defense is involved in, and they are in Title ten.
Speaker 5: Somebody's brought up one are the requirements, the air requirements
Speaker 5: in Title ten, the US Code that creates the Department
Speaker 5: of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. And he's he
Speaker 5: brought out the three things that I think are most important.
Speaker 5: He's focused on improving the terrems because those of.
Speaker 4: Us that have been in combat like him, like myself
Speaker 4: and others. I've been wounded in combat and been to
Speaker 4: more than one more. You want to deter wards. You
Speaker 4: don't want to have to engage your wars, and you
Speaker 4: want to focus on.
Speaker 5: War fighting and lethality. That's the role of the Secretary
Speaker 5: of Defense. He's going to have their sixty five confirmed people.
Speaker 5: They've already named a very strong team to be in
Speaker 5: there with him. John Falon to be Secretary of the Navy.
Speaker 5: Dan Driscol to be Secretary of the Army. Brince Kobe
Speaker 5: a real expert on policy, Mike Duffy a very tremendous
Speaker 5: expert in the acquisition area, and the deputy Feinberg a
Speaker 5: very very successful businessman, and the number two person is
Speaker 5: the chief operating officer. So the notion that somehow the
Speaker 5: Secretary of Defense is got to run the Pentagon all
Speaker 5: by themselves.
Speaker 4: And plus you've got the service chiefs, you got the
Speaker 4: Joint chiefs, you got the war fighting combat and commander.
Speaker 5: So in my judgment, it takes that kind of a team,
Speaker 5: and the names that I've seen so far, because I
Speaker 5: know most of them have worked with them over the years,
Speaker 5: very experienced, is going to be a very strong team.
Speaker 4: General.
Speaker 1: We all remember John Tower in nineteen eighty nine. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you have any personal anecdotes from that
Speaker 1: experience or any firsthand stories, but can you speak to
Speaker 1: our audience about how rare it would be for a
Speaker 1: nominee like this to go down in a vote and
Speaker 1: committee or on the floor.
Speaker 5: Well, in history, the only one that has not been
Speaker 5: approved was John Tower, and that was a very sad day.
Speaker 4: He was a great chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Speaker 4: The full expectation was that.
Speaker 5: He would be confirmed, but there were issues that came
Speaker 5: up during the confirmation process, particularly as it relates to.
Speaker 4: The FBI re court that.
Speaker 5: Him not being approved, But the Committee and the Congress
Speaker 5: turned around and the Senate very quickly and put Dick
Speaker 5: Cheney in very quickly after John Tower's nomination was not approved.
Speaker 5: And so I think, frankly, the Senate deserves to give
Speaker 5: Pete headsp an up or down vote on day one.
Speaker 5: He's the only other civilian in the war fighting chain
Speaker 5: to come in from the Commander in chief to the
Speaker 5: combatant commands. We need a Secretary of Defense on there
Speaker 5: on day one, and he should get an upper down vote,
Speaker 5: which has been the president for secretaries of the Defense,
Speaker 5: and people that want to vote for him can vote
Speaker 5: for him.
Speaker 4: People that want to vote a gist him vote against him.
Speaker 5: And you know, a majority vote rules, and if he
Speaker 5: gets a majority vote then he will be eligible to
Speaker 5: be sworn in and appointed day one. But he deserves
Speaker 5: an upper down vote on January twentieth. That's been the
Speaker 5: plan and the president going all the way back to
Speaker 5: Democrat Republican presidents that on a new president that has
Speaker 5: a new Secretary of Defense gets an upper down vote
Speaker 5: on day one, and I hope.
Speaker 4: That will be the case.
Speaker 2: Well, and assuming he is confirmed ultimately to lead this position.
Speaker 2: Talk if you will, general about what exactly he's going
Speaker 2: to inherit If we've heard in this hearing a lot
Speaker 2: of kind of bureaucratical challenges, if you will, about the
Speaker 2: acquisition process, about an audit for the DoD. But then
Speaker 2: there's also the very real challenges in multiple theaters around
Speaker 2: the world where there are live conflicts or the threat
Speaker 2: of conflicts. How is he going to be able to
Speaker 2: navigate both those internal and external questions.
Speaker 5: Look, he's inheriting the same challenges as the last two
Speaker 5: or three presidents of HAAD. We live in a world
Speaker 5: that's more dangerous and unstable than the peak of the
Speaker 5: Cold War. We don't have the right strategy for dealing
Speaker 5: with the threats that we face from Russia to China, Iran,
Speaker 5: North Korea in global terrorism. We need to get back
Speaker 5: to basically being able to deter and if the Turrets
Speaker 5: fails to fight and win two major theater wards on
Speaker 5: a near simultaneous fasis, we're not getting the bang for
Speaker 5: the buck we should for the dollars we spend in
Speaker 5: the Pentagon in constant dollars, and we're spending more than
Speaker 5: the peak of the Reagan build up.
Speaker 4: And the forts and fifty percent smaller.
Speaker 5: One of the things he brought out today is we
Speaker 5: need to get people, you know.
Speaker 4: Into the combat arms.
Speaker 5: And we have over three hundred thousand active duty military
Speaker 5: serving in inherently non governmental jobs are serving in the
Speaker 5: rear with the gear. The overhead in the Pentagon is massive.
Speaker 5: The requirements process needs performed, the acquisition process needs performed.
Speaker 5: We spend over four hundred and twenty billion dollars a
Speaker 5: year in the Pentagon on goods and services, supplies and equipment,
Speaker 5: and about the only thing you can say about that
Speaker 5: out but has been more, take longer, get less.
Speaker 4: And these problems are well known.
Speaker 5: He's going to with his team going to have to
Speaker 5: tackle every single one of these. If you want to
Speaker 5: improve the turrens, the turrens is really important. You need
Speaker 5: to have the military capability. It has to be credible
Speaker 5: and your adversaries have to believe that you're going.
Speaker 4: To use it.
Speaker 5: So he's going to inherit some significant challenges in all
Speaker 5: of these areas.
Speaker 1: We're spending some time on Bloomberg TV and Radio with
Speaker 1: retired Marine Corps General Arnold Pernaro, who literally wrote the
Speaker 1: book on Senate Confirmations. General, I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about some criticism that we've heard from Democratic members of
Speaker 1: the committee about the FBI background check into Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 1: There are multiple reports here that the FBI did not
Speaker 1: interview Hegseeth's ex wives or the woman who actually accused
Speaker 1: him of sexual assaults in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: How unusual is that?
Speaker 1: Would that have been writing on a request from a
Speaker 1: committee leadership to look into that and interview those women,
Speaker 1: or is this a problem for the FBI to have
Speaker 1: not been as comprehensive as it should be.
Speaker 5: First of all, I want to applaud the new leadership
Speaker 5: in the Senate, the Leader Thun and others.
Speaker 4: It says, look, we're going.
Speaker 5: To require the same kind of FBI fulfilled investigations for
Speaker 5: the Trump nominees that has been required in every single
Speaker 5: previous president Democratic, Republican. And so that request doesn't come
Speaker 5: from the committees, it doesn't come from the Senate. It
Speaker 5: comes from the White House Council's office, in this case,
Speaker 5: the Transition Council, because their White House Council for Trump
Speaker 5: has not been set up till January twentieth, and so
Speaker 5: they have the FBI go out and do what's called
Speaker 5: a full filled investigation of potential nominees, and then that
Speaker 5: material is provided to the chairman and ranking member on
Speaker 5: the Center of Armed Services Committee, and it's at the
Speaker 5: chairman's discretion, as it was when my boss was chairman
Speaker 5: for eight years, as to who else might get access
Speaker 5: to that. One of the things you have to understand,
Speaker 5: it's not like an Inspector General report. It's not like
Speaker 5: a Article thirty two in the military, where there's an
Speaker 5: investigation their findings and their recommendations and they come to
Speaker 5: a conclusion and they say.
Speaker 4: Well, this person is right and this person's law.
Speaker 5: It's just raw investigatory files and they can be very misleading,
Speaker 5: and so the FBI reports have to be treated with
Speaker 5: great deference in terms of what they can then used for.
Speaker 5: One of the things that I felt and people know
Speaker 5: that was very unfair in the Power thing is that
Speaker 5: there were a lot of things that got leaked out
Speaker 5: of the FBI report that weren't corroborated, and it was
Speaker 5: very damaging. And so I think the approach that Chairman
Speaker 5: Wicker is taking in terms of restricting the FBI report
Speaker 5: is appropriate in terms of what's in it, None of
Speaker 5: us are ever going to know because it's not going
Speaker 5: to be made available publicly, and certainly you have to
Speaker 5: rely on the investigatory skills of the FBI that they
Speaker 5: did a thorough investigation. And so typically what happens is
Speaker 5: if the Council believes there's disqualifying information in an FBI
Speaker 5: fulfilling instigation, they'll notify the President and the President will
Speaker 5: have to decide whether he still.
Speaker 4: Wants to go forward or not.
Speaker 5: The fact that the report was provided to the chairman
Speaker 5: ranking member, the fact that that things are going forward,
Speaker 5: I just I don't have firsthand knowledge. I certainly don't
Speaker 5: have access to it. I don't have any leaked information.
Speaker 5: My work and assumption would be there's nothing in that
Speaker 5: report that's disqualifying, and because the proceedings are going forward, all.
Speaker 2: Right, General, thank you so much for joining us on
Speaker 2: balance of Power today. That's retired Marine Corps General Ernold Panaro,
Speaker 2: who is Joe mentioned. Is also the author of if Confirmed,
Speaker 2: An Insider's view of the Senate confirmation process.