‘Mitch McConnell Is In’: Fox News Reports On Ex-Host Pete Hegseth Clearing Key Vote Ahead of Likely Confirmation

Fox News reported Thursday on Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News morning show host, passing a key vote to become President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense.

“Breaking news this afternoon. I’m Martha MacCallum and this is the story breaking right now. The senate voting to advance Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary. There’s a couple of steps that are in in the in between on this. As you just heard John Roberts mentioning, there’s this is a test vote,” began anchor Martha MacCallum in the afternoon, adding:

We have had word that Lisa Murkowski, Senator Murkowski of Alaska, will be a no. But of course, it would take at least three no’s, which it does not sound like they have against Pete Hegseth in the Senate in order to even need the JD Vance as vice president tie-breaking vote. But it doesn’t sound like that’s even going to be necessary at this point. He has cleared the hurdle that is the main hurdle before this vote for secretary of defense.

I should also mention that we are waiting for the swearing-in of John Ratcliffe. So things are starting to move a little bit faster today as we see some movement on this. And we do expect that we’ll see a swearing-in for John Ratcliffe as CIA director. As you remember, he was, of course, the DNI, director of national intelligence in the first Trump presidency and will have an intelligence role as head of CIA in this presidency, as while we wait for that swearing-in and also another EO executive order coming for the White House.

MacCallum then brought in Capitol Hill reporter Aishah Hasnie for further details.”Hey, Martha. Well, this is a big deal for Pete Hegseth that the defense secretary nominee, because this means that he may have the 51 votes that he needs for final confirmation without the help of Vice President JD Vance,” Hasnie began, adding:

And that’s because Mitch McConnell came forward today and voted yes on cloture. This is overcoming the filibuster. To get to that final confirmation, two senators that we expected to vote no voted no on cloture, and that was Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.

And both of them put out pretty lengthy statements on X, Susan Collins putting her out just a few moments ago. And they’re both pointing to a couple of different things. They both say that they don’t believe that Hegseth is prepared to manage such an enormous-sized department like the Pentagon. And then also pointing to those past allegations of infidelity. And they just don’t feel comfortable saying that he’s just not ready for that role.

So that’s the two senators that are out. Mitch McConnell is in as is all as are all the other senators in the conference. Roger Wicker, the Armed Services Committee chairman, had told me right before this vote I’d asked him, do you think you still have the 50? That was when Lisa Murkowski came out as she was a no and he said yes. So they walked into the room here feeling confident. They had whipped the votes for quite some time.

And they knew that they had these votes and they would not need JD vance to come in. What happens next is a lot of waiting. It’s a waiting game because Democrats are going to jam the Senate again, invoke that 30-hour debate rule, and we won’t see a final confirmation vote on that until probably late Friday night Martha.

Watch above via Fox News.