Democrats got slightly lucky last month when accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz took himself out of the running for attorney general. Under the pro-GOP rules that prevail in the media, the assumption seemed to be that Democrats couldn’t take out every unqualified nominee for the cabinet. They had to choose one. At most two. So Gaetz was a gimme.

Unqualified degenerate Fox weekend host Pete Hegseth must be booted next—but Democrats cannot stop there. Hegseth can never run the Department of Defense. There was already a disturbing story out about his being accused of rape by a colleague at a GOP event—he denies it, though he paid for the woman’s silence. But it took The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer to tell the fuller story of Hegseth’s predatory and reckless conduct throughout his career. He is, by Mayer’s account, a serial sexual abuser, harasser, and adulterer, and a habitual drunk who’s been carried out of public events routinely. He tried to join a group of dancing strippers on stage at a company event; on the same night, he tried to sexually assault a colleague. He ran into the ground two organizations dedicated to helping veterans. Then he got a job at Fox!

Just before Mayer’s story came out, The New York Times revealed that Hegseth’s own mother once excoriated her son via e-mail for his treatment of women.

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.

She also wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

She told the Times this week that she’d retracted the e-mail and regretted sending it. It has the ring of utter truth, however.

There is nothing to recommend Hegseth to take this job, running the nation’s military and weapons strategy and supervising a force of 2.1 military service members and more than a million civilian employers or contractors. (Does Hegseth even supervise his Fox producers? One or two?) Trump has his pick of qualified people, among them talented if loathsome conservatives. Hegseth is not one of them.

There are two conjoined theories about what Trump is up to with this and other picks—RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services, Kash Patel for the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. He wants absolute loyalty from his cabinet. And he also enjoys sending a hearty “Fuck you,” not so much to Nation readers or writers but to the types of Republicans who actually staffed his first term as president, and who gradually saw their way to the door.