Donald Trump’s transition team has begun quietly assembling a list of alternatives to Pete Hegseth, Vanity Fair reported Wednesday.

The Fox & Friends host has been the subject of immense scrutiny since he was nominated last week to head the Department of Defense, after allegations surfaced that Hegseth had sexually assaulted a woman at a Republican event in Monterey, California, in 2017.

Hegseth’s lawyer said the claims had already been investigated and nothing had come of it, but soon after, it was reported that Hegseth had agreed to a settlement with the accuser in return for her signing a nondisclosure agreement.

Two Republicans close to Trump told Vanity Fair that they were preparing a contingency plan in case Hegseth’s nomination fell apart.

“It’s becoming a real possibility,” one of the sources told the magazine.

“People are upset about the distraction,” the second source said. “The general feeling is Pete hasn’t been honest.”

A MAGA insider insisted that although Hegseth had been vetted, the allegation hadn’t come up. Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, was briefed on the allegations the day after Hegseth’s nomination was announced. The claims were so serious that Wiles and a lawyer for Trump’s team approached Hegseth about them the following day.

Hegseth’s nomination has also garnered backlash over his misogynist and anti-Muslim statements, as well as his reported ties to extremist Christian nationalist figures and tattoos featuring slogans used by white nationalist groups.

Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace are bringing out the rhetorical big guns to knock down Representative-elect Sarah McBride.

Over the course of the week, Greene has accused McBride—the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress—of being mentally ill and partaking in a “war on women.” Now Greene is claiming that a trans woman’s mere presence in a bathroom is tantamount to assault.

“I’m not kidding you,” Greene said Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s War Room. “It is like a physical assault for a man to come in, charging into our private places, bathrooms, locker rooms, our gyms, places that are designated specifically for women only.”

A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that bathroom-related nondiscrimination laws pose practically no risk to women and that claims to the contrary are little more than myths that are “not empirically grounded.”

Mace also elevated the assault claims, arguing Tuesday night on Fox News that “the idea of a man walking into a locker room where I’m changing, is actually—it feels like assault.”

Greene and Mace’s purported support for women’s safety abruptly ends with their fizzling fears over transgender rights, however. The pair of MAGA acolytes are vehement supporters of Donald Trump, who famously said that he could grab women “by the pussy” and is a judge-determined rapist, convicted adulterer, Jeffrey Epstein confidant, and proud abortion rights destroyer.

On Tuesday, Mace introduced a resolution that would ban trans women from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity in the U.S. Capitol. The attention-seeking South Carolina representative openly acknowledged that the stunt was a direct attack on McBride—again, who will be the lone transgender woman in Congress—telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

McBridge had her own response to the resolution, describing it in a statement as a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.”

“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars,” McBride said. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Senator Lindsey Graham doesn’t care what the ethics report on Matt Gaetz says; he doesn’t think alleged sexual misconduct should knock Donald Trump’s nominee out of the running for attorney general.

CNN’s Manu Raju asked Graham Tuesday for his response to the “serious allegations of sexual misconduct” against Gaetz. Before Raju had even finished speaking, Graham was already shaking his head.

“Nobody should be disqualified from a media report,” Graham replied.

Asked Lindsey Graham if the sexual misconduct allegations involving Gaetz, including sex with a minor (which Gaetz denies), gives him pause, Graham said: “Nobody should be disqualified because of a media report.” pic.twitter.com/ZOiFZKyV3u

The House Ethics Committee is set to vote Wednesday on whether to release the report on its........

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