Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth correctly called the media out on Monday for lying about his past comments about women not serving in combat in order to suggest he looks down upon women serving, belittles their service, or that he even opposes their inclusion in the military. However, CNN Newsroom host Jim Acosta welcomed Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed to his Tuesday show, where they both falsely suggested Hegseth was merely flip-flopping to get confirmed.
To make his point, Acosta introduced two clips of Hegseth, “Pete Hegseth is trying to walk back some of these comments he has previously made about women in the military, saying they have been, quote, ‘misconstrued.’ But let's listen to what he said in November and compare it to what he said last night on Fox.”
In the first clip, Acosta took a nearly two-and-a-half-hour interview and boiled it down to one sentence, “I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
That was a clip of Hegseth’s November 7 appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, but here’s a highly relevant portion Acosta omitted:
And so you had women truck drivers or fuel or mechanics on these convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then they'd be ambushed or hit by IEDs and suddenly now you have women in combat. That's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield. That's different than intentionally saying we're going to put women into combat roles so they will do the combat jobs of men knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit. And if you say you haven't, you're a liar.
Because everybody knows between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different. And so if you want to, I'm okay with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are for everybody. And if there's some, you know, hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion. But that is not what's happened.
Hegseth later added, “I'm not even talking about pilots. I'm not talking about pilots. I'm not talking about the ability to do. I'm talking about physical labor-type, labor-intensive-type jobs.”
Viewers didn’t get that context, and it is fair to ask why, because it certainly would’ve put Hegseth’s Monday statement in context where he said:
I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don't support women in the military. Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women who served, raised their right hand to defend this country and love our nation, want to defend that flag. And they do it every single day around the globe. So, I'm not presuming anything, but after President Trump asked me to be his Secretary of Defense, should I get the opportunity to do that, I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military.
Acosta followed by asking, “Mr. Chairman, what do you make of that?”
Partly because he is a Democrat partisan and partly because Acosta didn’t put Hegseth’s November 7 clip in its proper context, Reid replied, “It sounds like a pre-confirmation conversion. He was pretty blatant. He's not only been blatant in his comments, he's blatant in his writings that women should not be in combat. And then now, suddenly to disown those comments, it seems more calculated to get votes for a confirmation than it is his real policy, which he'll carry out.”
Hegseth did not disown his comments, Acosta just committed an act of journalistic malpractice. Will Daniel Dale fact-check his own colleagues? Probably not, but he should.
Here is a transcript for the December 10 show:
CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta
12/10/2024
10:18 AM ET
JIM ACOSTA: And I'm sure you know this. Pete Hegseth is trying to walk back some of these comments he has previously made about women in the military, saying they have been, quote, “misconstrued.” But let's listen to what he said in November and compare it to what he said last night on Fox.
PETE HEGSETH [NOVEMBER 7]: I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.
[DECEMBER 9] I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don't support women in the military. Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women who served, raised their right hand to defend this country and love our nation, want to defend that flag. And they do it every single day around the globe.
So, I'm not presuming anything, but after President Trump asked me to be his Secretary of Defense, should I get the opportunity to do that, I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military.
ACOSTA: Mr. Chairman, what do you make of that?
JACK REED: It sounds like a pre-confirmation conversion. He was pretty blatant. He's not only been blatant in his comments, he's blatant in his writings that women should not be in combat. And then now, suddenly to disown those comments, it seems more calculated to get votes for a confirmation than it is his real policy, which he'll carry out.
