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It's the Brian Laira Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We're going to do a special coverage edition of the show today to cover the confirmation hearing, which began a few minutes ago, for President-elect Trump's nominee for Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth. We will also touch on the breaking news overnight that special counsel,

Jack Smith, released his final report on the criminal charges against Trump that had to be

dropped because of the election, but describe what the report called Trump's, quote,

unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.

But mostly it's the Heg-Seth confirmation hearing this morning.

And why are we doing this if we don't plan to do it for all the nominees?

Well, who the Defense Secretary is matters tremendously to the United States and to the world.

And Hexeth is highly controversial for a number of reasons. They range. tremendously to the United States and to the world.

And Hegset is highly controversial for a number of reasons.

They range from his personal conduct with women to his lack of experience, running large organizations and failures, running small ones, to his worldview that he is laid out

in detail as an author and as a Fox News host.

For example, he predicted in a book of his in 2020 that if Joe Biden won that presidential

election, there would be some sort of civil war, use the term civil war, in which the military

and the police would be forced to make a choice,

his words. Another way he put it, America will decline and die. A national divorce will

ensue. Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back, unquote. So I'd say it's one thing for a

politician to have those views,

just as a matter of politics. It's potentially a whole other thing if the leader of the armed

forces does. So there will be a lot to question Pete Heggseth about. We'll see how Democrats and

Republicans do it. And it's not purely a left-right split. For example, you can count the

Wall Street Journal editorial board as Hegg-Seth skeptical. They wrote today, it's still puzzling that

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