The Matt Gates sacrificial lamb is not going to save Pete Higgseth. He's not going to get confirmed if we have our way and we put enough pressure on the process to be the next secretary of defense. We've got new information that's out there about things that he has said and written in books, things that he has said and written about women, women in the military, the role of men in leadership, all making him wholly unfit.
to serve as the leader of the Department of Defense. And I'm going to tell you who to watch in this particular hot take, watch Senator Joni Ernst, Republican. We also refer to her occasionally as Lieutenant Colonel Joni Ernst and her questioning in the Senate confirmation hearing. I'm Michael Popok. You're on the Midas Touch Network and legal AF.
If, if a HEGSeth and Trump thought that gates going away noisily and withdrawing his nomination in almost record time was going to save HEGSeth, think again. All it's done is that we have new reporting, new information, new leaks.
new emphasis on, on how wildly inappropriate and unfit to be the, the, um, the head of the department of defense, Pete Haggseth from Fox and friends actually is first. We heard last week, this is the drip, drip, drip, then I'll turn to Joni Ernst in a minute. First we heard that he was accused of rape.
sexual abuse, sexual assault in California, 2017, entered into a non-disclosure agreement and paid off that victim. His lawyers took to the airwaves represented by Tim Parletore, who used to represent Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case until he quit Donald Trump.
Tim Parletore took to Breitbart and threatened the victim on behalf of Hagg Seth and Trump effectively and said that she was the aggressor. Right. That Hagg Seth got raped by the woman and that if she came out against her and breached her non-disclosure agreement, they were going to sue her.
Right. To try to intimidate her from ever testify. He even said if she tried to testify at the Senate confirmation hearing, they would go after her. That sounds like obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Now, that's not Hegcess only problem. Besides the fact that, you know, he's on his third marriage. He first marriage ended after he cheated on his first wife with a second wife. I mean, he's got a, a trail
of women that he's abused and used and cheated on all along the way. But let's focus on a new reporting about books that Hagg Seth has written in the last 14 years on his with his Fox celebrity. In particular, one that he wrote as recently as 2020 called an American crusade, right?
And it's one in which he envisions a slightly, a likely civil war. This is not a novel. This is his thinking and teachings. Hegseth envisions a future civil war where the army and the military have to take sides to be used against other Americans
for bloodshed in the streets. It's an apocalyptic vision consistent with his Christian right wing nationalism. That's why he's covered in all sorts of crusade tattoos, the Jerusalem cross and God wills it all sorts of other tattoos that relate to the crusades. He's so into the crusades, the original crusades. And actually he has a title for one of his speeches that he gave was about make the crusades great again.
in which he gave a speech that the Republicans and MAGA should crush, humiliate, and intimidate leftist opponents. He's talking about other Americans. Crush, humiliate, and intimidate them.
calling them the enemy within. Now you know where Donald Trump got his cheat sheet from for all of his rallies and speeches towards the end of the campaign, came out of the fevered mind and the weird stew of Pete Haggseth. Now he's also said other things that are going to get him in trouble when he's being, when he's being asked questions in the confirmation process, including by Lieutenant Colonel Ernst. Now, now he has said publicly,
that women should not be in combat roles in the military. Let me let that land for a minute. Talking about stealing someone's valor, women who for the last almost 35 or 40 years have served and died and been wounded and injured
On behalf of America, the greatest sacrifice, not to Pete Hexett, Pete Hexett, they have no role being there. He believes in male hegemony, males dominating in leadership every position of power, everyone. So between that and how his opinions on abortion,
which include denying military personnel, the ability who are in red states and bases to travel to blue states in order to have reproductive health rights. He's against that as well. But I can't wait till Lieutenant Colonel Joni earns to serve with distinction overseas as part of the National Guard deployed in Iraq. I can't wait till she starts interrogating Hegsef. And when Hegsef goes around to try to get votes
being escorted by his chaperone J.D. Vance when Lieutenant Colonel Ernst interrogates Major Hegsef about his belief that the Posse Comitatus Act, which has been on our books since the Civil War period and our reconstruction, which precludes bans the U.S. military's use on domestic soil for domestic policy reasons, which is exactly what he's calling for in his books.
And he can't, I want to see his reaction. Let's go through your chapters in the American crusade and the statements and comments that you made there. Do you still stand behind these? This was not a novel, sir. This is not fiction. This wasn't found in the historical fiction section of our local bookseller. This was your belief, your philosophy. Now let's turn to your Christian nationalist beliefs.
which, look, the people that he follows believe that there needs to be an apocalypse, the coming days in order for the sinners to go to hell and everybody else to go to heaven and for the re-establishment of heaven on earth.
Is this who I want running the Department of Justice? I mean, the Department of Defense, sorry, I had Gates on the mind, the Department of Defense, the person with his finger near the finger of the nuclear button, to start World War III, I thought the purpose of the Department of Defense was to prevent World War III, not to cause it for some biblical prophecy to come true.
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Texas got a lot to talk about. Sex crimes as alleged are the least among them. From what I can see about his unfitness to be the Commander in Chiefs Commander.
And as I said, if Donald Donald Trump, one thing Donald Trump learned from the, from the Gates debacle is that there is no political will as expressed by Joni Ernst, by John Cornyn, by Susan Collins, by Lisa Murkowski, by at least a half a dozen other Republican
senators to allow the Senate to be the president's laptop. They're not going to allow him to stab the Constitution in the back and take the Senate out in the back and shoot it and make it go on immediate recess appointment. Everybody, we all gone fishing.
So that Donald Trump can do recess appointments and slam through his cabinet, subject to a challenge of the United States Supreme Court, catch me if you can. So we have acting heads of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, judges, military intelligence and all of that for two years without Senate confirmation or public hearing. There's no will for that. That's one thing he learned because if he could have done it, he would have done it to save the Gates nomination.
Right? And so he's not going to do it, which means the power has now shifted backward belongs in the hands of the Senate.
And the Senate is taking it seriously. And the Senate Republicans are taking it seriously. And Joni Ernst is taking it seriously. Look at her background. She wanted to be, and she would have been a great pick, by the way, to be the Department of Defense Secretary instead of HEGSAF. Everybody wanted Joni Ernst. Joni Ernst wanted it. Lieutenant Colonel Senator Joni Ernst wanted it.
She got passed over because until Don, until Donald Trump picked Pam, Pam Bondi, you know, his top four were all white guys. I mean, even, even Marco Rubio for the top four cabinet positions and the women were relegated to the kids table for cabinet posts. So she got passed over. I'm sure she didn't feel great about that. She got passed over again in the Senate about a week ago when they picked, they, she wanted the number three position and leadership in the Senate, the whip.
the vote whip. She didn't get it. But now she's now she's going to get her due, right? Because she's going to take a shiv to these outlandish cabinet picks. And she's let it be known. I mean, one of the major reasons that Gates saw that he had no path to confirmation is because he met with Cornyn and he met with Ernst.
And they said, you have no path to confirmation. We're not going to ignore the sex allegations, which have now multiplied, by the way, since, and I'm sure they will, it's sort of like Tiger Woods. Remember, there was like one woman who came out against them.
By the time the month was over, you had to have a spreadsheet, an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the women. It was like 56 women against them. Well, now that the ceiling has been broken and the seal has been broken, we're going to get more allegations against Matt Gates, which is going to completely burn his career beyond all recognition. You won't be able to identify him with dental records. That's where we are with him. And again, I want to compliment
and celebrate this community here on LegalAF and on the Midas Touch Network, because we talked about the things you can do. Every state's got two senators. Get on the phone, get on the email, get on social media, put pressure on your social media, put pressure through social media on your senators to oppose these obscenely unqualified, unfit picks for these various cabinet roles. Others are going to get through. I mean, I don't blow smoke or sunshine here.
Pam Bondi's going to get confirmed. You know, as I said, jokingly in another video, at this point after Gates, a chimpanzee wearing a diaper and smoking a cigarette, we get confirmed as the Attorney General. You know, as long as he doesn't have a sex crime report against him. So she's flying through.
Yeah. The deputy attorney general getting confirmed, solicitor general getting confirmed. Um, but we got it. We got to draw the line, right? Commerce secretary is going to get confirmed, probably EPA, although that's a little bit dicey here, but RFK junior to run 40% of the American budget and have his hands on all those levers of power about health and science. I'm not so sure about that. We're going to put the cross hairs on him next and on, um,
Dr. Oz from Medicare and Medicaid really and Tulsi Gabbard who's effectively a Russian asset for military intelligence. I mean for director of intelligence. No, we just have to say no. It worked with Gates. Keep it up. Keep it up. The mousstrom, the firestorm of public, public denouncement help bring down Gates as did the reporting around it and the attention that we kept on it within just six days time.
went from, well, the report's not coming out at the house ethics committee too. Who cares? We're getting our information from other people, including the witnesses and the leaks and the reporting and the receipts and the Venmo and the checks. Give us time. We'll get to the bottom of it, right? It's like a string on your sweater, right? Well, once you pull that string by the time the day is over, you're half naked.
We'll continue to make people half naked as we criticize those that deserve to be criticized and hold and speak truth to power here on legal AF, the Midas Touch Network. So until my next report here on the Midas Touch Network, Midas Touch's legal AF podcast, Wednesdays and Saturdays, or over on our new channel, legal AF of a YouTube channel at legal AFM TN from Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popok and I'm reporting.
In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the LegalAF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.
