CNN’s New Hit Piece Against Hegseth Is A Giant Nothingburger

Pete Hegseth is on the cusp of becoming America’s next secretary of defense. But that hasn’t stopped legacy media hacktivists from running pathetic hit pieces in an attempt to tank his confirmation.

On Wednesday night, CNN became the latest left-wing propaganda outlet to drop a last-minute hatchet job against President Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon. Authored by Lauren Fox, Manu Raju, and Pamela Brown, the article effectively attempts to repackage old news as a “bombshell” development that could hinder Hegseth’s confirmation.

Citing two anonymous sources, the left-wing activists present reported details from the FBI’s background check on Hegseth, the contents of which were made available to the chair (Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.) and ranking member (Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, the authors hone in on purported comments made by Samantha Hegseth, Pete’s second ex-wife.

According to the report, the two anonymous sources maintained that the FBI “connected with Samantha Hegseth and she gave a statement in which she discussed concerns about Pete Hegseth’s drinking.” One of the sources reportedly “said Samantha Hegseth told the FBI, ‘He drinks more often than he doesn’t.’”

Anyone who reads the reported statement on its own is likely to come away with the impression that Samantha is speaking in the present tense and that Hegseth is currently consuming large quantities of alcohol. But it’s the very next sentence of CNN’s hit piece that dumps cold water on this “bombshell” development.

“The source familiar noted that Samantha and Pete Hegseth have been divorced since 2017,” the report reads.

In other words, Samantha and Pete haven’t regularly interacted with one another in roughly eight years.

“There’s nothing new here,” Hegseth’s lawyer Tim Parlatore told The Federalist.

As indicated by Parlatore, Hegseth has been open about his past personal struggles. During an interview with Megyn Kelly last month, the Army veteran discussed the trials he faced after coming home from deployment and how the person he was then is not the person he is today.

“I’ve never had a drinking problem. … No one’s ever approached me and said, ‘Oh, you should really look at getting help for a drinking [problem]. Never,” Hegseth said. “But, you know, what do guys do when they come back from war oftentimes? Have some beers. You know, how do you deal with the demons you see on the battlefield? Sometimes it’s with a bottle. Unfortunately, tragically, for too many guys, it’s with the bottle and then it’s depression, and even worse, suicide.”

Hegseth credited the “grace of God” for allowing him to find his “chapters of purpose that pulled [him] out of that.” He notably spoke of the “two J’s” that changed him as person: Jesus Christ and his wife, Jennifer.

“Without those two J’s, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. But with those two J’s … I’m a very different person than I was 10 years ago, than I was 15 years ago,” Hegseth said. “But I’m also the right guy to be in the Pentagon to understand what our young warfighters are going through. … I can speak to that because I’ve lived it.”

CNN’s Wednesday hit piece is one of several that left-wing outlets have run in recent months in an attempt to railroad Hegseth’s confirmation.

On Tuesday, NBC News reported on an affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law Danielle, who claimed without evidence that Pete engaged in threatening conduct that left Samantha fearful for her “safety.” It is only after readers get to the ninth paragraph of the article that they are informed that Samantha denies the allegations.

The lawyer representing Danielle — whom Parlatore previously described as an “anti-Trump far left Democrat” — reportedly works for a law firm with strong ties to the Democrat Party, according to Breitbart News.

Parlatore told The Federalist that the media’s smear campaign against Hegseth is the “exact same strategy” leftist “reporters” weaponized to try and tank Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court nomination.

They rolled out “a bunch of stories to try and sink [Hegseth’s] nomination from [the] beginning. When that didn’t work [and] all those things started to die out, then they [acted up] in the [confirmation] hearing,” Parlatore said. “If they had anything good, they would have asked him in the hearing. They didn’t. And now, because that fell flat, we are at the 11th hour, and they are pulling out all the stops. They’re gonna leak whatever they possibly can, whether it’s true or not.”

Hegseth’s nomination was advanced in a party-line vote by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday. According to Fox News’ Chad Pergram, the upper chamber could potentially vote on the Army veteran’s confirmation “late Friday night or in the wee hours of Saturday morning.”

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood