This has to be one of the more pathetic attempts to pretend “both sides” of the sexual assault allegations against Hegseth and Trump that I have seen in quite some time.

I’m not sure why CNN thought they were doing their viewers any kind of a favor by bringing on Trump apologist Tricia McLaughlin for this segment, and they really need to get their guests in order.

Trump staffers who are willing to lie to him as part of their job, or in hopes of future employment, are doing nothing but misinforming the public.

Unfortunately, that was again the case during the episode above. Here’s the back and forth where Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky had to remind McLaughlin why Hegseth is not qualified for the job of defense secretary, along with the fact that the rape or sexual assault allegations are not his only problems:

ROGINSKY: Pete Hegseth has a lot of problems beyond what you just said. Pete Hegseth, when he was at Princeton, published an article that said that women who are raped while they’re passed out, actually, it’s not really rape, because if they can’t consent, if they’re not aware of what’s happening to them, they’re it’s not rape.

I mean, this is someone who’s going to be in charge of a military that has had massive sexual abuse scandals. To be very clear, on both sides of the aisle, this is something that people have been looking at, senators on both sides of the aisle. It’s a problem. And if you talk to women who have served in the problem, they say it’s a matter not if but when they will be sexually assaulted.

To have someone like this as the leader of our military, who by the way, I also think, because of his own personal life and his failure to disclose certain details about it to the White House and others, is really mature as an intelligence compromised man. I mean, the bottom line is that this is exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be serving in a national security capacity because this is the kind of person who has things that he doesn’t want to get out that our enemies are probably already aware of.

Sure, Tricia, there’s bound to be someone in the Trump Organization and the Trump orbit who doesn’t have a problem with sexual harassment that they can put in this job. It doesn’t have to be Pete Hegseth.

Which was followed by the needless smear Tricia McLaughlin trying to pretend that Hegseth’s real problem — where he was credibly accused of sexual assault — was the same or equal to some Russian disinformation about Biden:

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, I have to note, even though our current commander in chief, Joe Biden, has sexual assault allegations against him. He is the leader of our country. He is the leader of the military. So we can go through this all day. But there are several people who are facing these allegations, whether they are true or not. We have to make sure that there are sound investigations without – I mean, without getting to sweeping.

ROGINSKY: OK, but he didn’t reveal. He did not reveal to his own people.

MCLAUGHLIN: You’re saying he didn’t disclose to the transition team.

ROGINSKY: He didn’t reveal to anyone. And that if I were the Trump administration, if I were Susie Wiles, if I was the one doing the vetting of him, I would be furious. Why not reveal something? Why was it that, apparently, Donald Trump had to find out, along with the rest of us, that there is a credible sexual assault allegation?

And by the way, I think we all know that sexual assault is incredibly difficult to prosecute. It is incredibly difficult to prosecute for reasons that are obvious. One person says a and another person says b. As a result, you can’t really figure out what happened.

MCLAUGHLIN: Like Tara Reade did. As Tara Reade —

ROGINSKY: OK, Tara Reade is now — Tara Reade is now living in Moscow and working for Vladimir Putin. So I think we understand where it’s coming from.

But look, this is a Republican woman at a Republican convention who accused Pete Hegseth of this. This is not some democratic deep state facility —

MCLAUGHLIN: Where there are no charges, and this was eight years ago. It must be —

ROGINSKY: Listen, I worked — listen, I worked with Pete Hegseth at FOX. And let me tell you one thing, Pete Hegseth has issues beyond this that need to be looked into, because Pete Hegseth has a problem where he goes out and he gets drunk, and that’s also not something that we necessarily need in our Department of Defense and that person who leads our military. So I would just say that I like Pete on a personal level. There are surely people more qualified than him.

SIDNER: Julie Roginsky, Tricia McLaughlin, thank you both for talking it through with us.

All they have is projection. I look forward to Hegseth’s nomination going up in flames. I hope he sticks around long enough for hearings so he can lose his gig at Fox too.