President-elect Donald Trump's Defense Secretary-nominee Pete Hegseth is getting a groundswell of support for his confirmation in the Senate.
There are more than 100 Navy SEAL veterans and war fighters reportedly planning to march to support him on the first day of his confirmation hearing.
The Navy SEAL Foundation's Bill Brown is organizing the event akin to his annual Navy SEAL Hudson River Swim.
"Pete Hegseth has been a monumental part of promoting that Navy SEALs Swim," podcast host Alec Lace said this week. "He swam across the Hudson River a number of years in a row. And so he's been a big advocate for the Navy SEALs, and now that he needs help, the Navy SEALs and Bill Brown has turned around, and they are going to be helping Pete Hegseth in any way that they can."
The march plan began with an email blast from Brown to his Navy SEALs Swim participants and "the response was immediate and overwhelming," according to Lace.
"Now the veteran community and, in particular, the SEAL community is going to be there to have Pete's back," Lace said on "The Alec Lace Show."
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has come under fire among Trump backers and Hegseth supporters for not coming out unequivocally to say she supports Hegseth for defense secretary, but she is now at least saying she is willing to listen.
Ernst is one of several Senate Republicans who control the fate of Hegseth, an infantry combat veteran and former TV weekend host who spent the past week on Capitol Hill trying to win the support of Republican senators who would need to confirm him to lead the Pentagon.
Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview recorded Friday that he believes Hegseth will be confirmed and that senators have called him to tell him that Hegseth is fantastic.
"Pete is doing well now," Trump said in the interview airing Sunday. "I mean, people were a little bit concerned. He's a young guy with a tremendous track record."
Ernst has faced pressure from Trump supporters to back Hegseth. She is not only a sexual assault survivor but also served in combat as an Army National Guard lieutenant colonel — work that Hegseth has railed against.
He said as recently as last month that women "straight up" should not serve in combat roles.
"I'd like to hear about the role of women in combat in our great United States military," Ernst said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California.
She also wanted to see how Hegseth — who has no Pentagon leadership experience — would handle financial issues at the Defense Department.
"Balancing the books and managing and providing oversight for a $877 billion industry is extremely important," Ernst said.
A day earlier, Hegseth posted on social media he "had another substantive conversation with Sen. Ernst, I appreciate her sincere commitment to defense policy, and I look forward to meeting with her again next week."
Ernst said she looks forward to seeing him in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as part of a confirmation process "where he'll have to answer some very tough questions."
"There will be a very thorough vetting before he moves forward," Ernst said, adding that she wants to ensure it's a fair process.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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