If you turn on Fox News, you won’t see or hear much about Pete Hegseth, the longtime Fox anchor turned Trump nominee to lead the Department of Defense.

While Hegseth has been publicly excoriated this month for allegations of rape, sexual harassment, and misconduct and repeated drunkenness on the job, his former employer is trying its best to look the other way.

CNN analyst Brian Stelter reported that the conservative media hegemon that employed Hegseth for more than 10 years has yet to discuss the multiple allegations that its former employee is embroiled in, according to SnapStream and TVEyes database searches.

“What’s a media outlet supposed to do when its longtime host is picked to run the Pentagon, and then a series of eyebrow-raising news stories trigger doubts about his appointment?” Stelter inquired on X. “If you’re Fox News, evidently, you just pretend the stories don’t exist.”

Stelter went on to note that there were multiple moments on Fox News programming in which Hegseth’s allegations were raised but then quickly objected to or moved on from.

“On Monday’s edition of Special Report, Chad Pergram said Hegseth’s confirmation ‘could be a problem’ because ‘he faces problems about his personal conduct.’ What problems? Pergram didn’t say. Neither has anyone else on Fox,” Stelter said.

This lack of coverage is a blatant attempt at damage control from one of the most biased media conglomerates we have. Hegseth’s team has described the allegations as “outlandish.” Their impact on his nomination remains to be seen.

Many of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are so underqualified for their positions that authoritarianism scholars have called them “anti-qualified.” But what they lack in relevant experience is substituted by something that Trump values far more: fealty.

With dozens of nominees lined up to lead different agencies, extreme loyalty stands as the one common denominator between whose careers live and die under the MAGA leader’s second term.

Among them stand five billionaires, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom Trump has tapped to lead something he calls the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump’s choice for treasury secretary, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, was also one of his major campaign donors.

Thirteen individuals who have a future in the next Trump White House made cameos at Trump’s criminal trials earlier this year, including Sebastian Gorka for counterterrorism chief, Kash Patel for FBI director, Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff, Dan Scavino as senior adviser, and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Another dozen have been hosts on Fox News or were regular contributors to Trump’s favorite network. They include ex–Fox anchor (and accused rapist) Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, Keith Kellogg to serve as Ukraine-Russia envoy, Representative Michael Waltz as national security adviser, and Sean Duffy for transportation secretary.

And, of course, several nominees are directly tied to Project 2025, which Trump briefly tried to distance himself from during his campaign after the details of the Christian nationalist agenda proved incredibly unpopular with the American public. They include Russell T. Vought for White House budget director, Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary, Michigan GOP chairman Pete Hoekstra to serve as U.S. ambassador to Canada, former ICE official Tom Homan to serve as border czar, and Brendan Carr—who has warned TV networks that they would face consequences for political bias—to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Trump’s transition team had previously promised that loyalty would be the singular criterion. In October, transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick said that no quality would be more important for incoming staffers than total allegiance to the chief Republican.

While explaining how Trump’s last administration buckled under the weight of staff turnover due to disagreements in “vision,” Lutnick said that the new agenda is to eradicate any internal hostility to the Republican’s plans.

“They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity—and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man,” the Wall Street billionaire said at the time.

The government efficiency czars Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy seem to be mulling over a monumental change: eliminating daylight savings time.

If anyone was worried that Musk and Ramaswamy would move unilaterally as unelected bureaucrats making sweeping decisions on behalf of the electorate, you can calm your fears: Apparently they’re seeding ideas from polls on X.

“Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!” Musk posted on X last week, in response to a poll by X user James Stephenson that found nearly 82 percent of fewer than 38,000 X users would “abolish” the system of changing the clocks forward in the spring and backward in the fall.

Isn’t that what democracy is all about? Acquiescing to the requests of “X users” who are most likely bots? Having a guy who runs a social media service make decisions for the country based on the popular opinion artificially generated by his own website? That kind of thing just makes you feel so patriotic.

“It’s inefficient & easy to change,” Ramaswamy replied in a separate post.

It’s not clear........

© New Republic