With Matt Gaetz withdrawing from consideration to be Donald Trump's attorney general, and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth's Pentagon nomination on the ropes amid explosive allegations of sexual assault, some pro-Trump Republican senators are lashing out and claiming it's all a hit job.
MSNBC's Ali Vitali brought the fact-check hammer down one attempt Thursday.
One particularly outspoken Trump defender, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), was caught by reporters on Thursday asking, "Did you talk to him about the sexual assault allegations?"
"You missed what I said earlier," Hagerty shot back. "It's a disgrace that — those allegations are nothing but what you said, allegations, that are he-said, she-said. This is a case that has been dismissed. This is just dredging up something to try to smear and discredit the candidate. It reminds me what happened to Brett Kavanaugh."
Vitali, however, had a few things to say about that to MSNBC viewers who saw the clip of Hagerty.
"So we're watching Republican senators try to downplay the sexual assault allegations and also try to compare them to that of then-Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh," she said.
"I do think it's important to point out the ways these two instances are different. In the Kavanaugh case, the witness in that instance, Christine Blasey Ford, went before the Judiciary Committee. That is definitely not where we are in this process now.
"But in the instance of Hegseth, there is the payment, the settlement that he made to this accuser, his lawyer has said that was to protect his career. But also there is the police report that NBC News was able to obtain overnight, that really goes into much greater detail than previously had been known about this allegation."
The upshot, she added, is that "certainly there's a lot of questions that senators might have as they go into these meetings, and certainly that the public should have, as Hegseth's nomination continues to progress."
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