It was 63 days ago that Donald Trump announced his attention to nominate Fox News host Pete

Hegeseth as his Secretary of Defense.

And in those 63 days, the American public learned a lot about Pete Heggseth.

There were his controversial public positions like his defense of accused and convicted

war criminals, his contempt for the Geneva Conventions, and his repeated insistence that women in the military

should not serve in combat roles. And then came a flood of revelations about Hegset's personal

life. First, there was the discovery that he had entered into a settlement with a woman who accused

him of sexually assaulting her at a conference in 2017. Hegseth denied that allegation. But soon, other stories were

surfacing stories about Hegsa's reputation for drunkenness on the job, both as the head of two

veterans organizations and as a weekend host on Fox News. There were also stories about his

financial mismanagement of the organizations he led and stories alleging a history of cruel

and offensive public behavior like drunkenly chanting, kill all Muslims at a bar in Ohio.

All of that made it look like Pete Hagseth might just, might just fail to get the Republican

support he needed to become Trump's next defense secretary.

And a lot of the attention about Hague says fate fell on one senator in particular,

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa.

Senator Ernst is herself, a sexual assault survivor, something she has spoken openly about in the past.

Abuse is not something you can just simply forget.

It stays with you forever.

And I know this personally.

As a survivor and as a United States Senator,

I feel it is important to be a voice for the thousands of victims across

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