Hugh Hewitt: Pete Hegseth's strong message ahead of confirmation vote

Audio By Carbonatix

Hugh Hewitt reacts to Pete Hegseth's strong message ahead of the Senate confirmation vote for him to be President Trump's secretary of defense.

Transcript below.

Hegseth: Good afternoon everybody. I just want to relay that it has been a great week. It's been a great day. Great day yesterday on The Hill meeting with senators earning every vote. Have a great deal of respect for this process. Advice and council have gotten great advice. We don't take anything for granted. Conversations have been robust, candid at times, with great questions on policy and personality everything. So we're gonna earn those votes, we're fighting all the way through the tape.

We're grateful to have the President's support, because his vision for this department of defense is to bring it back to its core capacity of deterring our enemies and if necessary, defeating those enemies.

And that means ultimately putting war fighting at the middle of what the Pentagon does. No more social justice, politically correct, approaches to how we fight and conduct wars.

This is about lethality, meritocracy, readiness, war fighting and accountability. I'm grateful that President Trump has bestowed this opportunity on me. This process has been a very good one. Despite all the noise on the outside.

Had a great interview with Megan Kelly yesterday, and will continue to answer questions specifically to senators, who are the ones that deserve answers to every question they have. And in every office we've stood in, we've welcomed that opportunity. It has been a great week, it's a process that's ongoing and we look forward to finishing it.

Hewitt: This is how you win. That's how you win a nomination battle. Don't go belly up, don't hide from reporters. Don't talk to reporters. Tell them what you want them to know and carry forward. Senators see that, senators hear that.