Tammy Duckworth Says Pete Hegseth ‘Inordinately Unqualified’ To Lead Pentagon

The Illinois Democrat said Hegseth’s claims that women weren’t effective in combat roles are just “flat-out wrong.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said Sunday she believes former Fox News host Pete Hegseth is “inordinately unqualified” to run the Pentagon after he was nominated to be the nation’s next defense secretary by President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump’s transition team is actively courting lawmakers to help confirm Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, amid a growing scandal over past allegations against him of sexual assault. The media recently obtained details from a 2017 police report, in which an unidentified woman accused Hegseth of assaulting her at a political conference in California. Hegseth has insisted the encounter was consensual, noting no charges were filed against him. The woman was paid an undisclosed sum as part of a settlement in 2023.

Duckworth said, however, she was disconcerted with the nomination.

“Remember that we’ve just fought over a decade of fights … and overhauled the military and its treatment of military sexual trauma,” Duckworth told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday. “It’s frankly an insult and really troubling that Mr. Trump would nominate someone who has admitted that he’s paid off a victim who has claimed rape allegations against him.”

“This is not the kind of person you want to lead the Department of Defense.”