Several Fox News employees tell NBC News that former Fox and Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth showed up to work drunk and stinking of booze at least a dozen times since he started on the show in 2017, one of them saying it was as recently as last month that the rapey white nationalist showed up with the Irish Flu before going on camera to spew right wing bullshit.
“Everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air,” a former Fox employee said. Worried about how being Secretary of Defense is a lot more demanding than sitting on a couch and talking to angry racist boomers, one staffer said “for the sake of national security, I really hope he has stopped drinking. Another said flat out that Hegseth “should not be secretary of defense. His drinking should be disqualifying.” But the Nazi tattoos aren’t, we guess.
Anyway, this probably explains a lot about why Fox isn’t defending Hegseth on air, they’re ignoring him altogether, per CNN’s Brian Stelter, concluding that with just a handful of mentions, most of them about that fake pipe bomb threat and one anchor making a stray comment that he’s “headed for a tough confirmation,” leading Stelter to conclude that “Fox has insulated its conservative audience from reports that might dim their perception of Hegseth and Trump, instead offering viewers a safe space where their existing beliefs are reinforced by sympathetic hosts and guests.”
Well maybe that wasn’t the most novel insight about Fox since it applies to pretty much every single second of their programming (when Jessica Tarlov, Neil Cavuto, or the handful of other non-MAGAs aren’t talking) with or without this Hegseth shitshow. Still has to sting a little extra that one of their own is facing an ever-steeper path to boozing and fucking on the job at the Pentagon.
Separately the Wall Street Journal reports the Senate GOP have “signaled the next few days could be critical for determining whether Pete Hegseth has enough support to be confirmed,” which sure sounds similar to what they said when Matt Gaetz’s bid was similarly circling the drain.