Michigan Dem Senator Sneers At Hegseth’s Experience. GOP Senator Crushes Him, Crowd Erupts Laughing

After Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) tried to consistently denigrate and mock Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, by suggesting in a snide voice that he lacked the experience to run the Pentagon, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) torched Peters with a withering reply.

Peters, who petulantly sneered at Hegseth for not meeting with him prior to the hearings, consistently harped on Hegseth’s alleged lack of experience with remarks such as, “We need strong management at the Department of Defense, first and foremost. We need someone who’s gonna grab the reins and give the taxpayers value … I know you had two previous positions. How many people reported to you in those positions? … What’s the largest number of people that you’ve ever supervised or had at an organization in your career?”

“We’re the board of directors here,” he boasted. “I don’t know of any corporate board of directors that would hire a CEO for a major company if they came and said, ‘Y’know, I supervised 100 people before.’”

“You talk about standards; I’m gonna go back to the CEO of the most complex organization in the world,” Peters taunted. “I don’t think there’s a board of directors in America that would hire you as a CEO with the kind of experience you have on your resume. … Do you think that the way to raise the minimum standards of the people who serve us is to lower the standards for the Secretary of Defense, that we have someone who has (here he started smirking) never managed an organization more than a hundred people is gonna come in and manage this incredibly important organization and do it with a professionalism and has no experience that they can tell us that they have actually done?”

“You have not convinced me that you’ll be able to take on this tremendous responsibility with a complex organization and having little or no significant management experience,” he concluded.

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“Senator, I’m grateful to be hired by one of the most successful CEOs in American history, should I be confirmed,” Hegseth responded.

“Mr. Hegseth, it seems to me that you’ve supervised far more people than the average United States senator supervises,” Wicker dryly chimed in, prompting laughter throughout the room.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) criticizes Pete Hegseth for having never managed an organization of more than 100 people.@SenatorWicker: "Mr. Hegseth, it seems to me that you've supervised far more people than the average United States Senator supervises." pic.twitter.com/X9zi3xTZjv

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 14, 2025