I get it that Donald Trump wants people who supported him in his cabinet. Every president does. Trump had more than 76 million people, the total number who voted for him, to choose from. Here’s my question: Don’t you think that in that huge pool of supporters, Trump could have found at least two people who have not been accused of sexual offenses to put in the enormously important positions of Secretary of Defense and Attorney General?
But noooooooo! He went with Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz, both of whom have been accused of committing sexual offenses. Gaetz was under investigation for sex trafficking a minor female by the department which he has been appointed to lead. After prosecutors decided not to press federal criminal charges, the House Ethics Committee took up a similar investigation and was prepared to release its findings when the Attorney General appointment gave Gaetz the opportunity to resign from Congress before the Ethics Committee findings came out.
Hegseth was accused of sexual assault by a woman to whom he later paid money to keep quiet with a non-disclosure agreement. Hegseth insists the sexual encounter, at a hotel after he gave a speech to a group of Republican women(!), was consensual. Yeah, that’s why he had to pay her off in return for an NDA. Happens all the time.
Naturally, Gaetz and Hegseth deny the accusations of sexual misconduct against them.
But really: Having sex with an underage girl and assaulting a woman in a hotel room after speaking at a political gathering are not on anyone’s list of qualifications for these two important jobs, with the sole exception of a list kept by one person, Donald Trump. He has faced multiple charges of sexual assault and harassment by, according to some counts, as many as 25 women. He was not only an associate but a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein, a pedophile who was notorious for holding sex parties with underage girls and inviting his friends to the parties. Trump was adjudicated in a New York court of having committed rape against a woman who sued him for defamation for having denied the charge—not once, but twice—and still faces civil judgements against him in the case.
These three men are disgusting sleazebags who have committed sexual assaults on women who either did not give consent or were too young to consent. In my lifetime, I have known hundreds of men who were either lawyers, as is Gaetz, or members of the military, as is Hegseth, who somehow managed to live their lives without paying for sex, trafficking for the purpose of sex, having sex with an underage girl, or assaulting a woman in a hotel room. Any one of those men I have known would make a better candidate for the august offices to which Hegseth and Gaetz have been appointed by their fellow sex-offender, Donald Trump.
One of the most important principles of leadership in any job is to lead by example. What kind of example does Matt Gaetz set for the Department of Justice as an accused sex trafficker and pedophile? What kind of example does Pete Hegseth set for the Department of Defense as an accused sexual assaulter? The military services under the command of the Secretary of Defense have had serious problems with sexual assault and rape by service members over the decades since women were integrated into all the uniformed services.
How are women in uniform going to feel with a man accused of sexual assault in overall command of the military branches in which they serve? Moreover, what will be the effect of Hegseth’s appointment on men who might be tempted to commit a sexual assault or rape on a fellow soldier, sailor, air force member, or Marine? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that at least some men in uniform will look upon the Secretary of Defense as a bro, an offender in arms so to speak, who might not be overly eager to investigate or prosecute members of the military for the offense he has been accused of?
They are all “innocent,” you realize, all those men who have adopted the Trumpian mantra of deny, deny, deny when charged with having committed a sexual assault. Can’t you just see them doubling down on denial now that one sex offender has been appointed to lead them by another sex offender?
What we have with the appointment of Hegseth to lead the Pentagon is a morphing of the ancient “brotherhood of arms” into the brotherhood of sexual assault and rape. What we have with the appointment of Gaetz as Attorney General is the morphing of the Department of Justice into the department of non-prosecution and pardons. Every one of the Jan. 6 felons Trump has promised to pardon after his inauguration was prosecuted by the Department of Justice and found guilty in a federal court of law.
Just ponder for a moment what effect that is going to have on the men and women who did their jobs as DOJ officials and federal prosecutors who worked hard to assemble the evidence of their felonies and present that evidence to the juries of ordinary fellow citizens who convicted them. Think of what those jurors are going to feel now that the man who swore retribution has put Matt Gaetz in charge of the department he will use to enforce retribution against the prosecutors who tried and convicted the January 6 defendants. Should the jurors be afraid that some of that retribution will fall upon them?
You bet your ass.
And now let’s discuss what these two appointments say to the rest of the world. Attorney Generals regularly travel abroad to meet with their counterparts in allied countries to discuss mutual law enforcement agreements such as extradition treaties and cooperation between the DOJ, FBI, and foreign law enforcement agencies. Into rooms at Great Britain’s Ministry of Justice, and France’s Ministère de la Justice and Germany’s Bundesministerium der Justiz and other allied departments of justice will stride no less a figure than the botoxed and blow-dried sex offender Matt Gaetz.
And into Britain’s Ministry of Defense and France’s Ministère des Armées and the German Bundesministerium der Verteidigung will stride an accused sex offender and a man frequently photographed showing off his white supremacist and Christian nationalist tattoos, whose sole qualification for his job appears to be being a weekend host of Fox and Friends.
You can almost hear them laughing and making jokes and coming up with nicknames for these two clowns. It’s being reported that the Gaetz and Hegseth nominations will face what has been described as stiff opposition in the Senate, which will come under Republican control after the first of the year.
If you believe that, I’ve got a pardon for the offense of criminal stupidity I can arrange to sell you.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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