It’s not just Matt Gaetz. The Trump transition team is worried about another set of heinous allegations tanking one of its most important Cabinet picks.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump Trump’s first pick for the Department of Defense, was investigated by California police over accusations of sexual assault in 2017.

The alleged assault occurred on the night of October 7 at a hotel Hegseth stayed at while attending the California Federation of Republican Women conference. The allegation to police was made five days later, according to the police report. The woman who accused Hegseth had a bruise on her right thigh.

The allegations, which were unknown to the transition team until shared via complaint, have left them scrambling. “There’s a lot of frustration around this,” an anonymous source close to the situation told The Washington Post. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

But on the outside, the future administration is rallying behind the Defense Department nominee.

“President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration,” said Trump communications chief Steven Cheung. “Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.” The president-elect himself has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct two dozen times over decades.

Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox and Friends host, has also made headlines for a questionable tattoo. Hegseth was actually banned from working as a National Guardsman at President Biden’s inauguration after pictures of a tattoo on his bicep reading “Deus Vult” surfaced. Meaning “God wills it,” the term, which originated in the Crusades, has been deeply co-opted by Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and other white Christian nationalist groups. The phrase has been used by January 6 insurrectionists, the white nationalists who rioted in Charlottesville in 2017, and by the man who shot and killed 49 Muslims at a mosque in New Zealand in 2019.

Hegseth’s own positions could certainly be described as Christian nationalist.

“Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must,” he wrote in his book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free. “Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

Hegseth also despises the idea of women and trans people serving in the military, and is extremely bigoted toward Muslims. Like the sexual assault allegations, he has denied any ties to Christian nationalism, claiming on X that he is the victim of “anti-Christian bigotry.” He actually cites the inauguration banning as what made him realize the military was too “woke” for him.

“I joined the Army in 2001 because I wanted to serve my country. Extremists attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war,” Hegseth wrote in his book The War on Warriors. “Twenty years later, I was deemed an ‘extremist’ by that very same Army … the military I loved, I fought for, I revered … spit me out.”

The impact of these allegations, and the tattoos, on Hegseth’s Defense Department nomination remain to be seen.

Elon Musk is starting to clash with Donald Trump’s team on some of the president-elect’s key issues, especially tariffs.

The Washington Post reports that Musk is trying to persuade Trump regarding Cabinet picks and economic policy, drawing the ire of the president-elect’s other advisers. On Saturday, Musk praised Argentine President Javier Milei in a post on X for cutting tariffs in his country. The central pillar of Trump’s economic program is raising tariffs.

In another post later on Saturday, Musk endorsed Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, for the post of treasury secretary over hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, who is in the running for the position. Both posts from Musk aren’t going over well with the rest of Trump’s team.

“People are not happy,” one person in contact with campaign officials told the Post anonymously. Musk’s posts seemed to reflect that the tech CEO and world’s richest man was acting like a “co-president” and beginning to overstep his role, the person added.

Musk’s praise of Lutnick, for example, came before any public statements from the campaign or any announcements from Trump. Musk also called on his followers to weigh in with their opinion on the Cabinet position, which might send a message that he thinks Trump needs some convincing—or pressure.

There is also friction between Musk and Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, with Axios reporting that the tech mogul thinks Epshteyn, who has pushed for appointments such as Matt Gaetz as attorney general, has too much influence over Trump’s choices. Musk has questioned the qualifications of Epshteyn’s preferred candidates, irking the longtime Trump adviser.

These disagreements reportedly came to a head last Wednesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where Musk and Epshteyn had an angry exchange at a dinner table. Musk even accused Epshteyn of leaking details about the Trump transition to the media, which Epshteyn denied.

If Musk gets into a turf war with other members of Trump’s team as Trump’s new presidential administration takes shape, he already has a big advantage. The tech CEO pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, and the president-elect has already included Musk in many important meetings, as well as a phone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy just after the election. Last week, Musk even took part in a private meeting with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, raising questions of whether it was on Trump’s orders.

Musk has been photographed with members of Trump’s family too, making it look like he has become part of Mar-a-Lago’s furniture and irking Trump’s advisers and staff. It seems that the world’s richest man has bought his way into Trump’s inner circle and won’t be leaving for the foreseeable future.

Donald Trump has announced that the next Federal Communications Commission chair would be Brendan Carr, the senior-most Republican on the FCC and a contributor to Project 2025.

“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for free speech, and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans’ freedoms, and held back our economy,” Trump........

© New Republic