Pete Hegseth sister-in-law, in signed testimony, says he raged at ex-wife | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Paste BN Pentagon Correspondent Tom Vanden Brook discusses the allegations against President Donald Trump's pick for secretary of Defense. A pastor told President Trump to 'have mercy' on migrants and transgender children at an inauguration prayer service. Wildfires prompt evacuations near San Diego. Paste BN National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise discusses what a Trump executive order means for wind energy. Records were set Tuesday as heavy snow blanketed the Gulf Coast.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today we discuss allegations against Trump's pick for secretary of defense. Plus there are new fire concerns near San Diego. And what a Trump executive order means for wind energy.
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An assigned affidavit, Pete Hegseth's former sister-in-law, claimed his ex-wife was terrified of him. I spoke with Paste BN, Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook for more. And allegations surrounding President Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense.
Tom, how are you sir?
Tom Vanden Brook:
I'm well, Taylor. Good to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
Good to have you as always, Tom. So let's just start here. I mean, what did Pete Hegseth's former sister-in-law say on this? What are some of the allegations?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, Taylor comes in the form of an affidavit that she sent signed to the Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed. In it, she details a number of allegations that involve abusive behavior toward one of Hegseth's ex-wives and alcohol abuse and some racial and sexual comments that are beyond the pale. These come just a couple of days before he faces a full Senate vote on his confirmation as defense secretary.
Taylor Wilson:
So Tom, without getting too graphic, I mean, can you give us a couple of examples of what we're talking about here?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, they sent her in a few things, Taylor, namely that the complainant says that Hegseth's ex-wife used a code word, a safe word when she felt threatened and that at one point had hidden in a closet because Hegseth had threatened her. Another batch of these allegations includes abusive drinking. A number of times he drank to excess and vomited and passed out. And in another case, he was found by a group he'd gone out with earlier, including the complainant at a strip club in his military uniform getting a lap dance.
Taylor Wilson:
How have lawmakers responded here, if at all?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, we've heard from a number of Democratic lawmakers on the committee who said this raises troubling allegations about Hegseth and it calls for a more thorough vetting of his background. So far we've reached out to a number of Republican senators on the committee about this particular affidavit, and we've not heard back. We've reached out to the White House as well. We're still waiting word on that. Hegseth's attorney has categorically denied this.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay, so I mean, what does this mean for Hegseth going forward after he already faced allegations of sexual assault?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, he passed the committee on Monday by a party line vote of 14 to 13. So he goes to the full senate and the Republicans have a slight edge there. They can't afford more than three senators who would vote against him. So it's a bit of a wild card. It appeared before this came out that he had the votes to get confirmed and perhaps he still does. We don't know. The Republican senators have not been talking about this yet. Perhaps they're still digesting it. We're still waiting word on what they think about it.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Tom Vanden Brook covers the Pentagon for Paste BN. Thank you, Tom.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Thanks Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
The pastor of an inauguration prayer service attended yesterday by President Donald Trump urged the newly sworn in president to have mercy on immigrants and transgender children making what she called one final plea. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde said during her sermon at the National Cathedral as Trump and Vice President JD Vance watched alongside their families.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde:
In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.
Taylor Wilson:
The pastor's remarks followed a first day of Trump's second term in office that included a flurry of executive actions to targeting transgender Americans and immigrants in the country illegally. Trump declared the federal government recognizes male and female as the only genders reversing protections for transgender people put in place under former president Joe Biden. Trump also declared a national emergency at the southern border, ordered the US Armed Forces to repel forms of invasion at the border and sought to end birthright citizenship despite questions over whether doing so is constitutional.
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Multiple wildfires broke out in San Diego County yesterday, prompting evacuation orders, school closures and power shutoffs while officials in Los Angeles remained on high alert amid strong winds and dry conditions. In the San Diego area, the Lilac fire grew to 85 acres and triggered evacuations. Officials said it was 50% contained as of yesterday evening while other fires in the area continued. You can stay up on all the latest from Southern California wildfires on usatoday.com.
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President Trump signed an executive order yesterday on wind energy. I spoke with Paste BN national correspondent Elizabeth Weise to learn more.
Hello Beth. Great having you back on the show.
Elizabeth Weise:
As always a pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
So just in terms of the basics, Beth, what did President Trump decide here as it pertains to wind energy?
Elizabeth Weise:
So on Monday he signed an executive order that temporarily halts offshore wind energy, lease sales in federal waters. And pauses, approvals, permits and loans for both offshore and onshore wind.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay, so what does that actually functionally mean for the country and the wind energy industry?
Elizabeth Weise:
It's all a little unclear. So land-based wind turbines are a big deal. They produce a little more than 10% of the United States electricity right now. And in some states like Texas, they're almost 30% of the state's energy. So onshore wind is a big, big deal. Offshore wind actually really isn't yet. There are three functioning offshore wind farms in the United States and only one of them is really large scale. There's one that was just a test site, I think it's got two or three turbines, and then there's another one that's kind of intermediate.
That said there was a lot in the pipeline though they hadn't actually started to build most of it. And it's partly because a lot of states on the East Coast had said they didn't want onshore wind, so they didn't want terrestrial wind. Better to stick it offshore, like a half mile offshore where you couldn't see it. And so you have all the benefits of wind energy without actually having to look at it. Now that Trump wants to halt offshore wind, it's really unclear what this is going to mean.
Taylor Wilson:
So Beth, you outlined in this piece that we've already seen some backlash against wind, especially at the county and local level. Can you talk through that and sort of how we got to this point?
Elizabeth Weise:
So to recap, there's two kinds of wind. There are wind turbines that are on the ground and then there are wind turbines that are out to sea. On the ground in the US we have a ton of wind, but we've also got a lot of people who don't like it often for aesthetic reasons. They just don't like to look at the turbines. And I did a big project last year where we looked at every county in the United States and 15% of US counties have either banned or blocked new utility scale wind or solar installations.
So this form of energy that is entirely renewable and basically once you build the turbine, it's relatively free, is blocked in a lot of places. It's a big energy source, but there has been opposition to it. And as we know, president Trump does not like wind, he doesn't like windmills, he thinks they're ugly and he has wanted to stop them for a long time, and that's what this executive order is trying to do.
Taylor Wilson:
And Beth, on the other side of the coin, I mean, why do advocates argue that wind energy is important as a kind of, I guess an aspect of the renewable conversation?
Elizabeth Weise:
When you build a wind turbine, if it's on land, which the vast majority of them are, you can still plant crops around them, you can still graze cattle around them. So it's not like they take up inordinate amounts of land mass. It is very cheap energy that is only getting cheaper because it's not like you have to buy coal or natural gas, it's just the wind. One of the issues with wind is that, and this is actually in the executive order, it's intermittent, which means the wind does not always blow. And so, one of the things in the executive order is that it requires an investigation to be done on what are the issues around the intermittency of wind and the economics of it.
Now that is true if you build a wind turbine, it does not turn every day, all day. One of the things that has really built out in the last two years are utility scale battery storage.
I mean we're talking an array that's like 20, those big container ship containers in a row, that's just one big battery. And so when the wind's blowing, you store the energy on these batteries and then when you need it, which is typically when people get home from work, you can use it then.
Intermittency is an issue that has been dealt with and is being dealt with, but it's clearly of concern to some in the Trump administration. It'll be very interesting to see what those reports reflect when they come out. And we don't have a timeline on those yet.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, yeah, I was going to ask I mean the language here is interesting, temporarily and pause. So what does this really mean going forward? We just have to wait and see from the Trump administration.
Elizabeth Weise:
So there are a lot of offshore projects which are at various stages of the regulatory process, so those could be canceled. Onshore, almost all wind is installed on private land, which the feds don't have control over.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting stuff. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Thanks for helping us break it all down, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to tell you what I know so far.
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Taylor Wilson:
A huge stretch of the south was hit with winter storms yesterday as brutally cold temperatures gripped much of the nation breaking snowfall records more than a century old in a region where even flurries are unusual. More than 30 million people were under a snowstorm warning until this morning from southern Texas through Georgia and into Virginia. And that included the first ever blizzard warning for Louisiana.
Scenes along the Gulf coast were particularly staggering. New Orleans had not received measurable snow since 2009 and yet was blanketed with more than the eight inches of snow forecast in some areas.
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Squirmy and Grubs are not your typical YouTube stars. One of them is able-bodied, the other is not.
Shane Burcaw:
We have found in these years of our relationship that when people realize we're in a romantic relationship, they are often confused.
Taylor Wilson:
How they navigate the challenges that dichotomy presents is the point. So is how normal their lives as an interabled couple really are. The story of Hannah and Shane Burcaw's relationship and others like it is captured in their new book, Interabled: True Stories About Love and Disability.
I joined my colleague Dana Taylor on the Excerpt to talk about what they hope abled couples understand about interabled love. You can find that episode right here on this feed beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern time today.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. If you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt.
I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.