HUFFPOST
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,”…