CNN host hits back as Trump adviser shrugs off damaging revelations as 'gossip'

An explosive whistleblower report uncovered this week detailed allegations that Trump defense secretary nominee and longtime Fox News personality Pete Hegseth got repeatedly intoxicated publicly while running the Concerned Veterans for America nonprofit organization.

During an interview with CNN on Tuesday, however, Trump adviser Jason Miller tried to brush off the entire report as "gossip."

After host Kasie Hunt asked him about the report, which claimed that a drunken Hegseth once had to be dragged out of a strip club in Louisiana after allegedly harassing workers there, Miller dismissed its significance entirely without engaging with its substance.

"That was basically just innuendo and gossip," Miller said.

This drew immediate pushback from Hunt.

"It was a report from the top of Concerned Veterans for America, the organization that he led, that he was later shown the door of because of allegations of financial mismanagement," she shot back.

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"But we need to be clear, again, when I say it was innuendo and gossip, it was written by a disgruntled former employee," Miller claimed, without offering any evidence to back up this statement. "This was not some legal finding or something in the court of law, this was a former employee..."

"It's an extensive... report that was used to remove him from his post," Hunt insisted. "It was not a single allegation or an anonymous employee who was upset."

"I would take issue with the characterization of that," Miller replied. "This was a disgruntled former employee."

In fact, CBS News reported this week that a current Trump insider, Jessie Jane Duff, was one of the people at Concerned Veterans for America who worked to give Hegseth the boot back in 2016.

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