The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, and he faced a really striking takedown from Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin. At one point, she grilled him on whether he had given an order allowing members of the military to shoot unarmed protesters if necessary. She also pressed him on whether the military has the authority to arrest protesters. In both cases, Hegseth stonewalled and obfuscated. Which got us thinking: Why exactly does Hegseth feel reluctant to reassure Democrats and the broader public about the military’s intentions toward civilians? Why does he feel like he can’t do that? We think it’s because Trump would perceive it as a sign of weakness and in some sense as a betrayal of him. And that itself reveals something deeply unnerving about the threat Trump and MAGA pose. Moira Donegan, a columnist for The Guardian, has a great new piece that discusses how important the appearance of authoritarianism, the trappings of fascism are to the Trump project. So we’re talking to her about all this. Thanks for coming on.

Moira Donegan: Thank you so much for having me.

Sargent: Let’s start by listening to audio of Senator Elissa Slotkin questioning Pete Hegseth today. It’s a bit long, but it’s worth it. Audio is courtesy of Aaron Rupar. Listen to this.

Elissa Slotkin (audio voiceover): Have you given the order to be able to shoot at unarmed protesters, in any way? I’m just asking the question. Don’t laugh. Like the whole country.… And by the way, my colleagues across the aisle—

Pete Hegseth (audio voiceover): What is that based on? What evidence would you have that an order like that has ever been given?

Slotkin (audio voiceover): It is based on Donald Trump giving that order to your predecessor, to a Republican secretary of defense, who I give a lot of credit to because he didn’t accept the order. He had more guts and balls than you because he said, I’m not going to send in the uniformed military to do something that I know in my gut isn’t right. He was asked to shoot at their legs. He wrote that in his book. That’s not hearsay. So your pooh-poohing of this—it just shows you don’t understand who we are as a country, who we are. And all of my colleagues across the aisle, especially the ones that served, should want an apolitical military and not want citizens to be scared of their own military. I love the military. I served alongside my whole life. So I’m worried about you tainting it. Have you given the order? Have you given the order that they can use lethal force against [unarmed protesters]? I want the answer to be no. Please tell me it’s no. Have you given the order?

Hegseth (audio voiceover): Senator, I’d be careful what you read in books, and believing it, except for the Bible.

Slotkin (audio voiceover): Oh my God. So your former predecessor, I guess that’s not enough for you. OK. On Iran—

Sargent: So whatever the truth is here, whatever order Hegseth did or did not give, what’s striking to me is that Hegseth feels like he cannot say, No, I didn’t give that order. And also note that he defaults immediately to defending Trump against what Hegseth’s predecessor, Mark Esper, said about Trump inquiring about shooting people in the legs. Your thoughts on this, Moira?

Donegan: Yeah. So we see, I think, with Hegseth in this hearing something we see with a lot of Trump appointees when they go on television: They’re really performing for an audience of one. So at the top of Hegseth’s mind might not be the needs of Americans who are watching this on TV. It might not be the truth and his ability to perjure himself or not. I think what he is really most conscious of in this moment is how he is going to appear to his boss, Donald Trump, right? And we see Pete Hegseth doing what a lot of Trump appointees and a lot of Trump allies try to do on television, which is not just to defend Trump personally but to project a masculine domination, a refusal of engagement with either the premise of the question, as we see in this exchange with Elissa Slotkin, or with the idea that there might be other authorities other than Donald Trump to whom they owe some deference or fealty or even just good-faith engagement.

Sargent: What drives me crazy about this is that the appearance of capitulating to Democrats is on his mind, as well. Answering a question directly from a Democrat is capitulation, and Trump would hate that. You know what I mean?

Donegan: Yeah. There needs to be almost an obsessive combativeness in this performance, partly because all these people know that they’re going to be clipped and circulated on television and on social media. To get these very short-form video dunks is a big incentive there. But also, I think you’re right that even simply answering a question that is asked, even responding in good faith is seen as excessive, almost emasculating deference or at least a failure of an opportunity to dominate.

Sargent: Right, it’s fight, fight, fight. That’s always been the Trump mantra of going back to around the 1980s and the Roy Cohn phase really, when it comes down to it.

Donegan: Yeah, the hostility........

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