Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, has alleged that he is the victim of a “smear” campaign designed to tank his nomination.
The former Fox News host has faced a deluge of allegations in recent weeks of inappropriate workplace behavior, and the news of a settlement with a woman who accused him of sexual assault, despite no charges ever being filed against him, has raised concerns about whether he will have enough support in the Senate to get confirmed.
In light of the allegations, Hegseth and his mother, Penelope Hegseth, made media appearances Wednesday to push back.
“What you’re seeing right now with me, it is the classic art of the smear,” the younger Hegseth said on the Megyn Kelly Show. “Take whatever tiny kernels of truth, and there are tiny, tiny ones in there, and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I am definitely not.”
When Kelly asked him if he felt he was being “Kavanaugh’d,” referring to the smear tactics used during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, Hegseth added: “I had a member, not 45 minutes ago, look me in the eye in private, just he and I, and say, ‘That’s what they’re trying to do to you … that’s their playbook, get ready for more, and they’re going to make it up, just like they have so far. All anonymous, all innuendo, all rumor, nothing sourced, no verification, and they’re just gonna keep doing it because you’re a threat to them.'”
In a separate op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Hegseth wrote: “The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down. It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown. They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf. They need to create a bogeyman, because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity. That is the only thing they are right about.”
There have been reports that Hegseth’s drinking habits have impeded his work at two nonprofit organizations focused on veterans’ care and that he had coworkers at Fox News reportedly concerned, but several former colleagues have come out on the record and denounced the claims. Hegseth also agreed to a settlement in recent years to head off a lawsuit from a woman who claimed he sexually assaulted her, though he maintains their interaction was consensual and no charges were filed against him.
Several years ago, Hegseth’s mother wrote him an email decrying his behavior amid his second divorce. The 2018 email, which the New York Times reported on last week, accused him of “dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling,” and she said he needed to be “called out.”
She appeared Wednesday on Fox and Friends to defend her son as a changed man.
“I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There’s emotions,” she said. “We say things, and I wrote that in haste. I wrote that with deep emotions. I wrote that as a parent, and about two hours later, my husband tells me I should think through things a little bit more, but Pete and I are both very passionate people. I wrote that out of love — about two hours later I retracted it with an apology email. But nobody’s seen that.”
During his interview with Kelly, Pete Hegseth said no one approached him with concern about his drinking, though he said that it is common for veterans who struggle upon their return stateside. Hegseth also acknowledged that he’s “a very different person than I was 10 years ago, than I was 15 years ago.”
The decision for both Hegseths to do media appearances Wednesday comes after a Trump transition team spokesperson told the Washington Examiner a day earlier that no Cabinet nominee was doing media appearances.
Hegseth spent about two decades in the military before retiring, and he deployed three times to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His view on the Pentagon aligns with Trump, in that the new secretary should focus on lethality and ending the department’s practices on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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All of Trump’s Cabinet picks will have to win a majority of Senate votes to get confirmed, and the Republican Party’s slim majority means each selection can only afford to lose two GOP senators and still get confirmed with the expectation of having zero Democrats vote to confirm them. Hegseth has met with several GOP senators, many of whom have shared their support for his nomination, though it is unclear if he will have enough support to get confirmed.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz was forced to withdraw his nomination as Trump’s attorney general in the face of similar opposition, while Trump’s picks to lead the intelligence community and the Department of Health and Human Services, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., respectively, are also considered to be in jeopardy.