It's the Brian Larry 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 Heggseth 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 HECSeth 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 Hegseth 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

Heg-Seth skeptical. They wrote today, it's still puzzling that President-elect Trump chose Mr.

Hegseth for such a senior post. Mr. Hegseth lacks the experience typically required.

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