Dems Grill Hegseth Over Iran War

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0:42All customers get a profit boost every NBA playoff game day. 21 plus and present in select states. Opt-in required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Melissa Murray in for Ari Melber, and tonight we are tracking two big stories. Today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before Congress for the first time since the start of the Iran war. Hegseth took direct questions about the rationale for the war, the expected timeline, the mounting costs, and more.

1:22Also today, the United States Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act. Liberal justices warn that today's decision may sound the death knell for this landmark civil rights law. But we start tonight with Pete Hegseth testifying before the House Armed Services Committee amid a deeply unpopular war that is grinding toward a second month. And the mood was contentious even before the questioning started. Protesters confronted Hegseth on his way into the hearing. You should be disgusted with yourself. You need to be arrested. Not to be outdone, Hegseth then used his opening statement to attack the war's critics, calling them the, quote, biggest challenge.

2:17Take a listen. The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point, are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans. In return, those reckless, feckless Democrats accused Hegseth of breathtaking hypocrisy, namely accusing his critics of being reckless and feckless while leading a war that has proceeded in the absence of congressional approval and any clear end point. Take a listen. You have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the president. The strategy has been an outstanding example of incompetence.

3:05This war of choice is a political and economic disaster at every level. You were incompetent then. You're incompetent now. Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough to be the commander-in-chief? Did you ask the same question of Joe Biden for four years? Joe Biden is not the president. You need to resign immediately. It's the incompetence. Hegseth testified that the cost of the Iran war has hit$25 billion so far. That is an enormous figure. But according to Politico, it, quote, falls far behind many outside estimates. Hegseth dodged other critical questions on the Hill today. He refused to give an estimate on the timeline for withdrawal from Iran.

3:50He refused to say whether he is, quote, beholden to the president or whether he is beholden to the Constitution. He also refused to say whether he had advised the president to go to war. And then there was this. He got tripped up on a key point. Take a listen. Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated underground. They're buried and watching 24-7. So we know where any nuclear material might be. We're climbing my time. for just a quick second here. We had to start this war, you just said, 60 days ago because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated?

4:31They had not given up their nuclear ambitions and they had a conventional shield of thousands of... So Operation Midnight Hammer accomplished nothing of substance. It left us at exactly the same place we were before.

4:46Joining me now to kick things off tonight is the admirable Admiral John Kirby, the former White House National Security Communications advisor. He is also an MS Now National Security analyst. Admiral, even some of the Republicans say that the Trump administration has failed to provide a compelling rationale for this war or to articulate what the endgame is here. Do you think that Secretary Hegseth provided any clarity today with this jaunt on the Hill? I think there were some missed opportunities for the secretary today. I think this would have been a terrific chance for him to lay out what the strategic objectives are and how they're and how they're going after each and every one of them.

5:27And I don't I didn't see anything in the hearing today. And I watched a lot of it that convinced me that they were actually trying to answer that that question. it was a missed opportunity for sure to lay out to the American people finally. I mean, it's been 60 days before the secretary testified finally to lay out why we're doing this and why now. Well, I thought it was interesting that he did take the opportunity to do some political mudslinging. So what did you make of the secretary calling both Democratic and Republican critics of the war the, quote, biggest problem and the biggest adversary here?

6:03I was really sorry to see that. I was not happy to see that very early on in the hearing, you know, it got so political and so partisan and the rhetoric coming from the secretary was so vitriolic about the critics of the war. It's not unpatriotic to question your government when your government takes you to war. And given the fact that this administration did not go to Congress before they went to war, did not try to lay the predicate for why they were going to war with the American people. I think it's fair for critics and supporters to have an opportunity to express those views and ask those questions here at this hearing today.

6:43So, again, I think it was a missed opportunity for the secretary. And I'm really sorry to see that that it got so vitriolic so soon, because, again, it's not unpatriotic to question your government. It's actually one of the most patriotic things you can do, particularly in a time of war. There have been a lot of questions about the strike on the Iranian girls school. This happened in the early days of the war. And today, Democratic Congressman Adam Smith brought it up. Let's take a listen to that exchange between the congressman and the secretary. The girls' school that got hit in the first days of this war.

7:20There is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake. And that happens in war. We identified this target based on earlier charts. And yet, two months after it happened, we refused to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don't care. We do not care about the casualties and the chaos that is caused by our war, and we should care.

7:47What do you make of the fact that military leadership has refused to take ownership of what many are regarding as a colossal mistake? I think it's important for the United States military to complete this investigation as quickly as possible. I'm frankly a little surprised that it's taken this long, although I know there's a lot of interagency coordination that has to go into laying out the findings conclusively. But I think it's important to wrap this up quickly and to be completely transparent with the American people about what happened, why it happened, and more critically, how we're going to prevent it from happening in the future.

8:26I know that the U.S. Central Command did a thorough job here. I've talked to some officials there. I think there's a process problem here that it has taken too long to work its way through. But it's imperative. And Representative Smith is not wrong. I mean, we should come clean on this so that we can more importantly learn from it and prevent it from happening again. What does it mean, though, that we won't acknowledge that perhaps a mistake was made here? Even in the absence of a conclusive investigation, something obviously went wrong. I want to believe, Melissa, that what's slowing this down is the interagency coordination process, because the preliminary findings, at least as reported in the press, made it seem like it was the intelligence was perhaps old that was applied to the targeting solution.

9:15and the intelligence that was provided to the military came from outside the military. So I want to believe that what's slowing this down is the coordination process with the intelligence community, and they'll wrap this up quickly. That's the generous view of this, and that's the view that I plan to take. I think the cynic's view would be that this administration doesn't like to admit mistakes, doesn't like to apologize, doesn't like to show what they consider weakness, but it's not weakness. If you've made a mistake, if you've hit something in error, then admit it as soon as you possibly can and tell the public what you're going to do to try to prevent it from happening.

9:50Again, that's not weakness. That's strength. That's confidence. That's security in your process and in your military capabilities. And that's not what's that's not what's being transmitted to the American people right now. Now, again, I want to believe this is a process problem and not a policy problem. But the cynics, I know I understand, are out there thinking that this is more of a policy issue. Well, the cynics are not just focused on that particular issue. They also have raised concerns over Hegseth's personnel decisions. Take a listen to Congressman Don Bacon. I share a bipartisan concern of the firings that we've seen at the Pentagon.

10:27on, four of the six service chiefs, for example, the Coast Guard. We had a huge bipartisan majority here that had confidence in the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Navy. And I would just point out, it may be constitutionally right. You have the constitution's right to do these things, but it doesn't make it right or wise. So there have been a lot of discussion of these personnel firings within the military, and some news outlets, including the New York Times, have noted that women and minorities appear to bear the brunt of these firings. What do you make of this shift in the personnel, and what does it mean for the fighting force that is incredibly diverse, as our armed forces are, to have a leadership structure that may be less diverse in terms of race and gender than it has been in the past?

11:17It's hard to know exactly how to answer that question because they haven't been transparent about why these individuals are being fired. Now, Representative Bacon is right. They certainly have the constitutional authority to hire and fire as needed. If you lose the trust and confidence of the commander in chief, then you need to go. I get that. But the congressman's also right that that doesn't necessarily make it the proper thing to do. And you have an obligation to explain to the American people why you're doing it, particularly when you're doing it at the scale that this administration is doing, the numbers of generals and admirals that are being let go with no explanation whatsoever.

11:57And the math bears the math, right? It is largely people who are minorities or women. And I think that that requires explication. I think that they, with an all-volunteer force, to your second question, when you're not governing conscription, when you're not making people join the military, it's an all-volunteer force, You have a special obligation, maybe a higher obligation to explain how you're recruiting and retaining individuals and just as importantly, letting them go. It sends a horrible message to the rest of the force that it to open a question to them as well, whether their service is even needed because they're not white and they're not male.

12:37Again, I hope that's not the case here, but we don't know because they're not explaining it. And the numbers do certainly contend a very worrisome pattern here of getting rid of people who are in the minority of the American population. Look, when you're an all-volunteer force, you can't afford to ignore any segment of the American population. And when our service members raise their right hand and swear that oath to the Constitution, they're swearing an oath to defend all Americans, no matter who they are, no matter who they voted for, no matter what they believe or where they worship. And that's a really important traditional foundation of our democracy and the U.S.

13:22military today. All right. Admiral John Kirby, thank you so much for kicking us off so admirably tonight. Thank you. We will be back in just 90 seconds with Congressman Seth Moulton, who is also on the Hill today directing some hard questions to Secretary Hegsa.

13:41Earlier, you called us feckless for questioning your war. Do you think Congress was smart or feckless when it failed to ask tough questions to the Bush administration and gave them a blank check for Iraq? How is this war going? Do you think we're winning? Do you call Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz winning? They blockaded us, and then we blockaded their blockade. That's like saying, tag, you're it. Are you afraid to take ownership of this? Do you think it was a good idea or not?

14:09As promised, joining me now is Congressman Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts and an Iraq War veteran who you just saw grilling Pete Hegseth. Congressman, those were some tough questions for the secretary, but what did you make of his answers? I mean, first of all, he confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that he still has absolutely no plan for how to bring this war to a conclusion. And he's becoming very squeamish about even admitting that he advocated for the war to the president and that he thinks it's a good idea. Now, of course, he insisted on saying that it was winning. But when I went through the various measures by which you might judge whether he's actually winning this war, it seems like they're losing on every count.

14:50And at the end of the day, he should not be losing a war that he should not have even started. Was that the biggest takeaway from today's hearing, that there's no plan here, there's no path forward, and there's no reason for us to be in Iran right now? I mean, look, there is a reason to recognize that Iran is a national security threat. We don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And Democratic and Republican administrations over the last 50 years have agreed on that. In fact, the first Trump administration agreed on that. And guess what? Iran has never had a nuclear weapon under any of these administrations, and they've all been able to achieve that without starting a war.

15:29So the fundamental question is, what are you gaining from this war? Because we know some of the costs, 14 Americans dead, a cost to taxpayers of about$600 a piece if we go with the$100 billion estimate, which is revised down from their initial request to Congress of an additional$200 billion. At the same time, they're advocating for a$1.5 trillion defense budget. $1.5 trillion. What does that mean? We throw these numbers around Washington. And I asked the secretary if he could just explain what that means to the average taxpayer. Look, that's$9 ,000. $9 ,000. If you have an extra$9 ,000 lying around to pay for Hegseth's Pentagon, let me know.

16:12But I certainly don't. Congressman, you have served in the armed forces and you know that leadership matters. Did today's testimony make you more or less confident about whether the secretary is the right person to be leading this war effort right now? Less confident, although I can't say I was surprised. He's the most incompetent secretary of defense in American history. Remember, he was only barely confirmed by the Senate. And what you heard from not just Democrats, but Republicans on the committee as well, is that we really do not have any confidence in this decision making. And when asked questions about decision making, he cannot justify what he's doing.

16:59All right, Congressman Seth Moulton, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Still ahead, the Trump DOJ's Comey indictment, the second one, is already backfiring with many legal voices on the right objecting. Take a listen. There's no crime here. I think the case is frivolous. Just showing the picture is going to be a weak case in terms of a threat. But first, the Supreme Court guts the venerable Voting Rights Act, triggering an extraordinary dissent from the liberal justices. We will get into it. That's up next. In Traverse City, you'll find it's your summer to let go. Just let the rhythm of the water set you free.

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19:12We now turn to a landmark Supreme Court decision with stark implications for American elections. Today, the court's conservative supermajority struck down a Louisiana voting map as unconstitutional, finding that lawmakers, quote, illegally used race when drawing a new majority Black district. The 6-3 decision split along predictable ideological lines. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, asserted that the ruling preserves a central tenet of the Voting Rights Act. His opinion reads, quote, Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost any other context.

19:58In a scathing dissent, which she read from the bench, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the majority for laying the groundwork for what she called the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction. Justice Kagan wrote that the majority's ruling licenses states to, quote, dilute minority citizens' voting power. And while the majority claims that this is merely an update to the law, Justice Kagan, writing for the three Democratic appointees, disagreed sharply, maintaining that the decision, quote, eviscerates the law. She called the decision, quote, the latest chapter in the majority's now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.

20:44During oral arguments back in October, Justice Kagan asked Janae Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who represented a group of Black voters, what the stakes were in this case. Take a listen. What would the results on the ground be? I think the results would be pretty catastrophic if we take Louisiana as one example. Every congressional member who is Black was elected from a VRA Opportunity District. We only have the diversity that we see across the South, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of Opportunity Districts under the Voting Rights Act. Today's ruling is a sad departure from decades of precedent, and it is also a very sad development for a law that was a signature key accomplishment of the civil rights era, landmark legislation that sought to protect minorities from discriminatory voting practices.

21:45Critically, today's ruling is the latest in a series of decisions from the high court that over the last decade have incrementally hobbled the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana, a state with a sizable Black population, will likely now lose one majority Black Democratic district. And the ruling also opens the door for other states to redraw their congressional maps ahead of an already contentious midterm election year. Today, lawmakers spoke out about the ruling. This decision today by the Supreme Court is a slap in the face. This is one huge step backwards for racial justice and for the health of our democracy.

22:32It is an attack on a crown jewel of our democracy. It's not Donald Trump or his Supreme Court majority that should be the ones to decide who gets to represent you in Congress. It's the American people. edge.

22:50Joining me now to break all of this down is the Reverend Al Sharpton, host of Politics Nation here on MS Now. He is also the president and founder of the National Action Network. Also with us tonight is Leah Lippman, a law professor at the University of Michigan and my co-host on the Strict Scrutiny podcast. Rev, let's get right into it. The Voting Rights Act was already hobbled after years of the Supreme Court incrementally chipping away at it. What does this ruling mean for voting rights in the United States for African-Americans and other minorities? Well, it was hobbled. Now it's destroyed, in effect.

23:25And it shoots in the heart of voting rights and civil rights. Because what they're saying is that you can no longer deal with the fact that there was racial exclusion. And therefore, you must be able to hold people accountable for continuing a racially exclusive kind of policy. And if you mention race saying that it was being exclusionary, then you can't do it. Well, then how do you remedy the fact that we were, you know, people act like we're asking for something. We only are saying to remake what you did to us. That's an affirmative move was made against us. So this is an important point. The map here was a remedial map drawn after Louisiana engaged in what the black voters termed a racial gerrymander and what a court found to be a racial gerrymander.

24:19And so the court ordered Louisiana to draw a new map that created an additional black opportunity voting district. And the court in this decision now says that the consideration of race in drawing that district is itself unconstitutional. And what you then have the effect, so you have the huge population of blacks in Louisiana. We'll put you all in one district and the ones of you that don't live in that district, you won't matter anyway. And so we can end up with several white congressmen from Louisiana and one black. And that's fair and equal because you can't bring up race. And that's what they will try to do all over the country is lump one district, two at the most, and have the rest of the state in smaller populated districts.

25:06Because you're not even talking about the same population. Smaller populated districts. So in effect, you will have the number of blacks in Congress and in state legislatures and in city councils. Minimum. Minimum. So we will have minimum input, but we're going to have to pay the same taxes. All right. Leah, speaking of paying the same taxes, we called this right on strict scrutiny. We said this was going to happen. We listened to the oral arguments. Let's take a listen to some of the sounds from that oral argument last fall where Justice Kavanaugh and some of the other justices basically signaled where they were going on this.

25:44Take a listen. This court's case, in a variety of contexts, have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time. They should not be indefinite. If it happens to be that people of one race or another race overwhelmingly prefer one of the political parties, does that transform the situation into racial voting? Is it acceptable under Section 2 for a court to intentionally discriminate in a remedial map on the basis of race? So Leah, we called this. We said that this is a court that's extremely skeptical of any use of race, even if it is for remedial purposes. Did this opinion translate the way you expected after listening to the oral argument, or was it even worse?

26:38It did translate what we expected, but that doesn't make it any less appalling. The oral argument clips you played signaled some of the things that Justice Alito, Justice Jim Crow-Lito, wrote into this opinion, basically declaring that time's up on multiracial democracy. Since things have changed so dramatically, racism is apparently over that we no longer need the Voting Rights Act's protections. You also heard Justice Alito's question, which basically signaled that, in his view, racial gerrymandering just doesn't exist in a world where there is racially polarized voting. That is, it's not permissible for minority voters to argue that they are entitled to a separate opportunity district if they don't align with the state's partisan objectives.