On Jan. 14, 2025, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for defense secretary, appeared in front of the Senate's Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing.
Hegseth, who is a Republican and considered a controversial nominee for several reasons, faced intense questioning from Democrats over his past, including allegations of alcoholism and sexual misconduct. Hegseth was defended and praised by Republican senators, who claimed that Hegseth would be able to fix the military's problems.
But according to an X post by Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, one Republican member of the committee spent too much time praising Hegseth and not enough time proofreading his prop poster — the poster misspelled the word military as "miltary." The photo went viral and Snopes readers wrote in asking if it was real.
The poster and photo were real.
A video of the confirmation hearing available on YouTube proved that the poster, a prop used by Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, did misspell the word military as "miltary." While the official feed from C-SPAN, the most reliable source for congressional happenings, did not display Schmitt's full poster, parts of it were visible behind him. The sections visible matched images from other angles showing the full poster.