Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing highlights Republicans’ servility to Trump | Moira Donegan

In some ways, the secretary of Defense nomination of Pete Hegseth was always meant as a domination exercise, a way of making Senate Republicans humiliate themselves for Donald Trump’s approval.

Hegseth has white supremacist tattoos and what is reportedly a pretty severe drinking problem: one friend told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that they once saw him order three gin and tonics at a breakfast meeting. In 2017, a woman went to the emergency room – and then the police – after what she said was a rape by Hegseth; he later paid a settlement and had her sign an nondisclosure agreement. (Hegseth claims the encounter, which took place while he was married to his second wife and had just had a child with the woman who would become his third, was consensual and denies all wrongdoing.) He wrote a book, The War on Warriors, which seems to consist mainly of his gripes about the presence of women in combat roles and his objections to the fact that American service members are required by abide by the Geneva conventions.

“From what I can tell,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs while serving in combat in Iraq, “the manager of your local Applebee’s has more experience managing a bigger budget and more personnel than Pete Hegseth.” That’s not entirely fair: the manager of your local Applebee’s probably has a good deal more dignity.

And so it should be no surprise that on Tuesday, when Hegseth appeared before the Senate armed services committee for his confirmation hearings, the assembled Republicans had nothing but kind, even effusive things to say about Hegseth. This is not because they are unaware of his character. It is because they are slaves to Donald Trump’s will, and have abandoned their advice-and-consent role – to say nothing of their self-respect – in order to please him.

In case there was ever any doubt about the slavish obedience of the Republican Senate caucus, it appears that allies of Trump and Hegseth have been working overtime to ensure that the confirmation process is not a fair fight. Witnesses who might cast Hegseth in an unflattering light – including the woman who accused him of rape and several whistleblowers who exposed his drunkenness and alleged financial mismanagement as the leader of two veterans’ non-profits – have been smeared in the rightwing media and threatened with lawsuits and public ruin; they have ultimately made the reasonable, and intended, decision not to testify.

Senators like Susan Collins and Jody Ernst – a veteran and rape victim who has been an outspoken advocate for victims of sexual assault in the military – have refused to meet privately with Hegseth’s accuser. An FBI background investigation seems to have been almost comedically superficial and perfunctory, as it was in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Meanwhile, the money behind Trump is being used to intimidate Republican senators into toeing the line, regardless of their advice-and-consent duties: Elon Musk has reportedly pledged to fund primary challengers for any Senate Republicans who do not vote to confirm Hegseth.

What is happening in the Hegseth confirmation, then, is not merely the nomination of an unqualified and dangerously incompetent man to a position of authority that he can’t handle and does not deserve. It is something more like the buckling of constitutional checks and balances in the face of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions – and Elon Musk’s money.

A senator who cannot meaningfully weigh a candidate without facing impossible reprisals is one who cannot fulfill the duties of their office. A raped woman or abused employee who cannot tell the truth of what happened to her without facing ruinous lawsuits and life-altering public harassment is one who does not have a full or actionable right to freedom of speech. We often speak of what Trump threatens, what he might do to our system of government. This vocabulary suggests that the danger is in the future. But the constitutional order is substantially impaired and dysfunctional right now: Trump, and the money behind him, have already proved themselves stronger than the separation of powers.

Hegseth’s appointment is largely a foregone conclusion, if for no other reason than the fact that the Republicans have neither the spine nor any real opportunity to vote against him. But his remarks gave some clue as to how he will run the American military once confirmed.

Hegseth leaned hard into the Musk project of ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and reducing the number of women and minorities in positions of leadership. “This is not the time for equity,” he said, repeatedly casting women’s presence in the military as a threat to readiness. He seems determined, too, to loosen American soldiers’ obligations to international law in ways that would enable them to kill more civilians and torture more prisoners. He said he would use the military to facilitate mass deportations; he said he would not give soldiers stationed in Republican-controlled states funding to travel for abortion care.

But what was perhaps most notable about Hegseth’s testimony was what he did not say: he did not say, though he was asked several times, that he would refuse to carry out an unconstitutional order by Donald Trump. That, too, might be why the president chose him. Our system of government is already broken. But the president-elect seems determined to break it more.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist