Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump‘s nominee to lead the Defense Department, backed off his past opposition to women serving in combat roles in the military but insisted Tuesday that he would keep standards high for all service members in a combative confirmation hearing.
Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox News host, pushed back on allegations that he disparaged women serving in the military under tough questioning from women on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“My critiques, senator, recently and in the past and from personal experience, have been instances where I’ve seen standards lowered,” Hegseth said.
The role of women, who account for nearly 18% of the armed forces, in the military was a prominent theme throughout the hearing as Hegseth had previously said that women should not be allowed in combat and has argued against diversity and inclusion efforts. Hegseth has since appeared to shift his views.
“Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles given the standards remain high and we’ll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded,” Hegseth told senators Tuesday.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) pressed Hegseth to clarify his previous comments on women in combat roles in a heated line of questioning in which she called his prior statements “hurtful,” “terrible,” and “brutal.”
“You will have to change the way you see women to do this job well, and I don’t know if you are capable of that,” Gillibrand said.
Gillibrand: We have hundreds, hundreds of women who are currently in the infantry, lethal members of our military, serving in the infantry. But you degrade them. You say, we need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units. pic.twitter.com/ToUcV9doff
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 14, 2025
“You cannot denigrate women in general, and your statements do that,” Gillibrand said, raising her voice. “’We don’t want women in the military, especially in combat’ — what a terrible statement.”
She stressed that the nominee to lead the Pentagon said in his opening statement that he did not want to inject politics into the military but claimed that everything Hegseth said in prior statements was political.
“You said in your statement — you don’t want politics in the DOD, everything you’ve said in these public statements is politics, ‘I don’t want women, I don’t want moms,’” Gillibrand said. “What’s wrong with a mom by the way? Once you have babies, you’re no longer able to be lethal? I mean, you’re basically saying women, after they have children, basically can’t ever serve in the military in a combat role. It’s a silly thing to say.”
The New York senator, a champion for preventing military sexual assault who has sponsored bipartisan legislation to hold perpetrators accountable, told Hegseth that his statements about women in combat roles are “brutal, and they’re mean, and they disrespect men and women who are willing to die for this country.”
Gillibrand pushed the nominee to give examples of how the standards were lowered, instead of making “generalized statements.”
“Commanders need quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry listed — that disparages those women,” Hegseth said, before Gillibrand interrupted him.
“Commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry, that does not exist,” she said. “Your statements are creating the impressions that these exist, because they do not.”
Throughout the hearing, Hegseth reiterated he now believes women “make amazing contributions across all aspects of our battlefield.”
In later questioning with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a veteran, the nominee committed to conducting a gender-neutral review of the military.
The New York senator also pressed Hegseth on prior comments that allowing gay people to serve in the military is “social engineering.”
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“As the president has stated, I don’t disagree with the overturn of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Hegseth said.
The nominee previously said the policy was part of a “Marxist” agenda that hurt military readiness at the price of prioritizing social justice.
