A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Hegseth Denies Drinking Problem But Promises Not To Drink

As bad as I expected Trump nominees to be, I still can’t quite believe that Pete Hegseth is now promising GOP senators that he won’t drink if he’s confirmed as defense secretary.

The reports about what he’s actually promising vary a little bit from senator to senator. It’s not clear if that’s because he’s saying different things to different senators or if the specifics are being lost in translation.

At the less crazy end of the spectrum, Hegseth is telling senators that he no longer drinks. “He offered up to me, and I know he has with other senators too, that he’s not drinking, and that’s not something he’s going to do when confirmed here,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO).

At the WTF-are-you-kidding-me end of the spectrum, he’s promising not to drink as long as he’s secretary of defense, which leaves the impression that he’s going to go stone-cold sober as soon as he’s confirmed by a pliant GOP Senate and then resume throwing ’em back once the Pentagon gig is over. “He said, ‘My commitment is to not touch alcohol while I have this position,'” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND).

For GOP senators concerned about confirming a Pentagon chief with a drinking problem, Hegseth offered this dubious reassurance Wednesday in an interview with Megyn Kelly: “First of all, I’ve never had a drinking problem.”

Hegseth denies he has a drinking problem but is promising senators he won’t drink if confirmed. Got it?

Drip, Drip, Drip

• “At Fox News, Hegseth had a reputation as a heavy drinker, according to six former Fox News employees who worked directly with Hegseth and saw him drinking on the job or visibly drunk at work events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.”–WaPo
• “More than once during his early years at the network, Mr. Hegseth’s heavy drinking and raucous behavior at Fox News-related events escalated into episodes that were addressed by company officials or co-workers.”–NYT

Hegseth’s Prospects: Dead Man Walking Edition

Pete Hegseth remained “defiant” and said that Trump had reiterated his support in a Wednesday morning phone call, but the overall trajectory of the nomination was still pointed downward:

• Politico: Hegseth’s future as Defense secretary hangs by a thread
• The Hill: Hegseth nomination sinking fast in the Senate 
• Philip Bump: Pete Hegseth’s strongest ally isn’t Trump. It’s Fox News.
• Politico: Pete Hegseth’s mother defends him, pleads with senators to ‘listen to Pete’

Quote Of The Day

“If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”–David Frum, speaking of Pete Hegseth during a Morning Joe segment Wednesday, after which Frum says he was scolded by a producer and removed from the air ahead of schedule. Co-host Mika Brzezinski then read an on-air apology for Frum’s remarks.

Trump’s Totally Normal Pick For FBI Director

• NBC News: Trump’s pick for FBI director promoted bogus supplements to ‘reverse’ vaccines
• Zack Beauchamp: I listened to hours of Trump’s FBI pick on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Oh boy.
• NBC News: Kash Patel once said he would ‘come after’ journalists. It now hangs over his FBI candidacy.
• Mediaite: Kash Patel Threatens to Sue Ex-Pence Aide For Saying On MSNBC He’s Unfit to Lead the FBI

Trump II Clown Show

• Convicted former Trump White House official Peter Navarro: senior White House adviser on trade and manufacturing
• Former Rep. Billy Long (R-MO): IRS commissioner
• Billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman: NASA administrator
• Fiserve Inc. CEO Frank Bisignano: Social Security Administration commissioner

Perfectly Normal: Trump Reneges On White House Counsel

Bill McGinley is out as Trump’s new White House counsel, replaced by David Warrington.

Trump Takes Credit For Yanking DEA Nominee

In a Truth Social post, Donald Trump seemed to confirm that Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister’s nomination for DEA administrator was scuttled over his enforcement of COVID pandemic public health precautions: “Besides, he didn’t pull out, I pulled him out, because I did not like what he said to my pastors and other supporters.”

Corruption Watch

NYT:

As the inauguration approaches, Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s second son and the company’s de facto leader, is expected to forgo deals directly with foreign governments. But he is not planning to revive the promise the company made eight years ago to swear off all other foreign deals while his father occupies the White House.

Without that guardrail — the centerpiece of the Trump Organization’s 2017 ethics plan — the company would be free to profit from an array of business in countries essential to American foreign policy interests.

Trump Prosecutions Update

• Georgia RICO case: “Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump asked a Georgia appeals court Wednesday to dismiss the Fulton County racketeering case against him because a ‘sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal.'”–NBC News
• Georgia RICO case: Ken Chesebro filed a motion to invalidate his guilty plea on the grounds that the judge in the case later ruled the charged he pleaded to unconstitutional.
• Hush money case: Trump has made a new bid to have his hush money conviction dismissed now that he has won the presidency.

Rudy G Still Flailing

Rudy Giuliani is still getting raked over the coals by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Giuliani did not file his response when it was due Monday to their motion seeking to hold him in contempt of court. Two days after the deadline, representing himself, he asked for a 30-day extension in a letter that excoriated the judge in the case. The judge denied his request for an extension because he didn’t follow the local court rules, including not signing his own letter.

GOOD READ

The Texas Observer reveals the men behind four major neo-Nazi accounts on X.

EXCLUSIVE

“President Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.”–Politico

SCOTUS Took Dim View Of Transgender Rights

The Supreme Court’s oral arguments Wednesday over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, while not definitive, did not bode well for transgender rights or faithful adherence to the high court’s own equal protection jurisprudence, as TPM’s Kate Riga reported:

• In Trans Case, Right-Wing Justices Mull Tossing Constitutional Protections In Favor Of Feigned Helplessness
• Right-Wing Justices Eager To Assert That Trans Case Has Nothing To Do With 2020 LGBTQ Win

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was the unexpected author of the majority opinion in an important 2020 transgender rights cases, was conspicuously silent in yesterday’s arguments.

Tiny GOP House Majority Is Gonna Give Speaker Johnson Fits

Aaron Blake:

That 220-215 majority is so tight that it’s actually the second-smallest in history, percentage-wise. According to data from the Pew Research Center, the only smaller majority came more than a century ago, in the 1917-19 Congress, when Democrats had an effective 217-215 edge.

Changes Afoot For House Dems

House Democratic leadership isn’t getting in the way of challengers to senior committee members whose effectiveness come into question:

• Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has withdrawn as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee in the face of a challenge from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
• Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who is in poor health, has stepped down as ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee
• Raskin’s committee switch opens up the ranking member position on the Oversight Committee.
• Rep. David Scott (D-GA) is still fending off multiple challenges as ranking member of the Agriculture Committee.

A Closing Thought

Mark Joseph Stern, on the current bleakness and the importance of bearing witness to the truth:

 If you look back at some of the most momentous or egregious injustices and illegal actions throughout our history, like segregation, slavery, Indian removal, the list goes on—you can always find people who were saying, “This is unlawful. It is wrong. It is shameful, and it violates the Constitution and the laws of this country.” And those people wound up being vindicated—even if they were in a minority at the time, even if they were censored and silenced at the time. It mattered to future generations and future movements that they were there laying down that marker. And so I guess when we are in our darkest moments, in the coming years, the best that we can probably do when we’re feeling totally useless is to hope that someday in the future, people will look back and say, “These guys were telling the truth. That mattered.”

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