Perhaps the biggest losers of Matt Gaetz’s confirmation defeat are cabinet nominees Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard.
Hegseth, nominated for defense secretary, and Gabbard, nominated for national intelligence director, now appear to be the main targets of the establishment media from among President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees.
The media will endlessly report on the alleged dangers of their nominations after successfully helping to defeat Gaetz from consideration for attorney general.
The media turned Gaetz’s nomination into a frenzy that dominated a news cycle lasting seven full days. The media fueled its wall-to-wall coverage with unfounded allegations of sexual misconduct. Gaetz dropped his bid on Thursday citing “unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” and Trump thanked him for his efforts.
With Gaetz out of the way, the media refocused attention on new targets. Friday morning newsletters published by some of the most powerful media organizations in Washington began to cover Hegseth and Gabbard in earnest.
Politico Playbook outright admitted who they would target next:
Now that Gaetz has been stage-hooked back to Florida, other controversial Trump nominees are going to face heightened attention — especially DOD nominee PETE HEGSETH, DNI nominee TULSI GABBARD and HHS nominee ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Any one of them could become the transition’s next problem child — whether it’s Gabbard, with her lack of foreign policy experience and her puzzling affinity for Syria’s Assad regime, or RFK Jr., with his controversial and extreme opinions on a litany of health topics and, for Senate Republicans, his support of abortion rights.
And then there’s Hegseth, who stands accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017 — which he denies — and paying her to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Speaking to reporters on the Hill yesterday, he maintained that he was clear of all charges stemming from the allegations. (More on Hegseth below) (Emphasis in original)
While Playbook launched into Hegseth, Punchbowl News took a special interest in Gabbard.
“Trump’s choice of Gabbard is in keeping with his desire to completely overhaul the federal bureaucracy,” Punchbowl News reported. “But GOP senators are already indicating they’ll be interested in probing Gabbard’s controversial and often outright hostile posture toward the very intelligence apparatus she’d run if confirmed.”
“Republican senators have privately discussed their interest in viewing Gabbard’s FBI file, according to three sources familiar with the conversations,” the outlet continued. “This is done for each Cabinet nominee, but the implication is that the documents could reveal previously unknown information about Gabbard, including possible foreign contacts.”
Axios’s newsletter featured a lead story entitled “Chaos reigns supreme in Trump’s Washington.” The story conveniently transitioned coverage from Gaetz to Hegseth.
“On Thursday, the bubble finally popped,” it reported. “For an otherwise pliant group of Senate Republicans, former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination as attorney general was a bridge too far.”
“A 2017 police report was released detailing graphic sexual assault allegations against Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary,” the outlet highlighted. “Hegseth, who met with senators Thursday, has denied wrongdoing.”
Americans’ trust in the establishment media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” plummeted to a record low in 2024, Gallup polling found in October.
Only 31 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to tell the truth, one point below its low watermark of 32 percent in 2016 and 2023.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
