President-elect Donald J. Trump’s secretary of defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, was able to fire the kill shot at ProPublica from the grassy knoll in their attempt to assassinate his character. The publication was prepping a story about Hegseth’s application to West Point. Hegseth was accepted but didn’t attend. West Point lied to the publication, saying Hegseth never applied. He did.
Hegseth showed his acceptance letter from West Point, which led to ProPublica editors saying they dropped the story once they learned about the clarification because “that’s journalism.” Yeah, the fart-sniffing exercise can end now. We have their emails about how they went about this story which were sent to Mr. Hegseth’s attorney: running with West Point’s lie, smearing Hegseth as a liar, and suggesting this makes him unfit to run the Defense Department, and only giving him an hour to respond.
***Nothing*** in Jesse’s 11-tweet thread even hinted that ***this*** is how ProPublica actually approached the story— taking the falsehood from West Point, repeatedly asserting to Hegseth that he was a liar & implying he is unfit for SecDef, & giving him just one hour to respond. https://t.co/LVnCe1556J pic.twitter.com/QsqADz72t5
— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) December 12, 2024
The absolute goobers at ProPublica went full self-fart-sniffing yesterday about "what journalism looks" like, including GIVING YOUR SUBJECT A CHANCE TO RESPOND, only to have given Pete Hegseth a whopping *one hour* to respond to the claim he lied about getting into West Point pic.twitter.com/c72ZpGwJoI
— Dylan Housman (@Dylan_Housman) December 12, 2024
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Pathetic and embarrassing by @eisingerj and @JustinElliott. One of many totally egregious excuses for journalism I’ve seen and heard about this cycle - publicly and privately. https://t.co/tvRF3TOy4e
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) December 12, 2024
ProPublica failing to own Pete Hegseth. https://t.co/fVo5t386gE pic.twitter.com/ONEy8FB8T5
— Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) December 12, 2024
Also, they whiffed at the other story about this, which is that West Point lied twice about Hegseth’s application.
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