Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen labeled the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, an “antisemite” during a charged hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday that saw the former Fox News chief spar with senators over allegations of spreading a Christian nationalist agenda and leading America into an unpopular conflict with Iran.
The moment came after Hegseth remarked to another senator that he sometimes referred to members of the press as “Pharisees”, a term referring to a sect of Jewish thought active thousands of years ago that has come to be used occasionally by non-Jews as a kind of slur meant to describe someone as hypocritical or litigious. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Pete Buttigieg faced criticism from some Jewish figures for using the term.
Hegseth remarked to a senator during the hearing, “I looked out at our press corps at the Pentagon and called them the Pharisees in the press, because they look for every problem.”
That quip prompted a response from Rosen, who is Jewish, minutes later.
“You compare journalists, you compare us, you compare so many to Pharisees. Pharisees, it’s a problematic and historically weaponized term that cast Jewish communities as hypocritical or morally corrupt,” said Rosen, adding that Hegseth had “doubl[ed] down” on using the term.
“Words matter. Words matter, what you choose to say, how we choose to say it. How do you justify using this language? As Secretary of Defense? Words matter. It’s a hurt, historically hurtful term. Why do you continue to use it?” asked Rosen. She also questioned how he was keeping those under his command from using similar rhetoric.
Hegesth responded: “Senator, I feel like it’s a pretty accurate term for folks who don’t see the plank in their own eye and always want to see what’s wrong with an operation, as opposed to the historic success of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. So I stand by it.”
Rosen responded again, telling the secretary that his response and refusal to recognize the term’s history were indefensible.
“I expect anyone who is in leadership in our country to be respectful and use respectful terms and not be an antisemite,” she said. Her allotted question time then ended, and as committee chair Roger Wicker gaveled the next senator to begin their time, Hegseth did not attempt to respond or refute the senator’s cutting closing remark, as he’d previously done to other Democrats in a hearing that at times devolved into a near shouting match between the secretary and the panel’s minority members.
The Independent reached out to the Pentagon for a response to the senator’s charge of anti-Semitism.
Rosen was not the only Democrat on the committee to suggest that Hegseth’s open embrace of Christian-heavy themes in official Pentagon statements was alienating to members of other faiths serving in the armed forces.
He also faced a significant number of questions about his firings and dismissals of top generals and other senior officials, more than half of whom were women or minorities. The secretary declined to comment on individual cases, but tacitly admitted that the effort was aimed at reversing what the Trump team saw as unwarranted promotions and elevations of officials during the Biden administration.
Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s ranking Democrat, also used his question time to press the senator on his embrace of “Christian nationalism.”
Reed told the secretary that “stressing the need for more Christianity in the military forces doesn’t seem like a neutral position on which you tolerate and accept all religions.”
But Hegseth was unrepentant and brushed off the idea that alienating members of other faiths was a concern for him.
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Senator, but I am not ashamed of my faith in Jesus Christ. And if you want to shame me for it, go ahead,” he said. “I’ve heard the likes of things that people like you suggest, to try to smear my character, and I won’t give in to it.”
