Pete Hegseth Gets ‘Fox & Friends’ Boost As Defense Secretary Nomination Teeters
UPDATED: With reports that Donald Trump is eyeing potential alternatives to Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, some of the former Fox & Friends Weekend host’s colleagues attempted to give him a boost.
Hegseth’s nomination faces new doubts in the wake of media reports about alleged drinking episodes, financial mismanagement and the settlement of a woman’s claim that he sexually assaulted her.
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Hegseth’s mother Penelope appeared on Fox & Friends this morning and blasted The New York Times for publishing a leaked 2018 email in which she wrote to her son that they were “broken by your behavior and your lack of character.” Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy read a portion of the email during her appearance.
“He is not that man he was seven years ago,” she said. “I am not that mother, and I hope people will hear that story today and the truth of that story.”
She said that she wrote the email in “haste” and “with deep emotion” as Hegseth was going through a bitter divorce, but that she retracted it about two hours later with an apology.
Calling the media “despicable,” she suggested that the Times contacted her and threatened to publish the email as is unless they got a response from her. “Pete is a new person. He is redeemed, forgiven changed,” she said, adding that being a TV news host “prepares you for most things in a position like this…I think everybody should do a year with Fox.”
Earlier, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade claimed that Hegseth has impressed senators in their one-on-one meetings with them, while contending that recruitment is up since his nomination. “He’s got the vision,” Kilmeade said.
Lawrence Jones said, “There is an effort to stop this nomination before the hearings, because they know that is where he is going to shine the most. They know that he knows his stuff. He’s a Harvard guy. He’s a Princeton guy. He wrote a whole book about transforming the military, the wokeness.”
“The fact that they are going out there with unnamed sources, when we sit on the couch with him for over ten years…to me that is the stunning part, especially when you don’t reach out to the co-hosts of the show for comment. No one has been contacted about that. I think that screams that it is a witch hunt.”
Yet The Wall Street Journal reported that some Republican senators are taking the media reports about Hegseth seriously, with a key meeting today with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA). The Journal also reported that Trump was considering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a potential replacement, along with Ernst and former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby.
The New Yorker published a story Hegseth’s past role as the head of two organizations, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America, including a whistleblower report that claimed that he was publicly intoxicated at events for the latter group while acting in his official capacity.
On X, Hegseth wrote, “The left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of Donald Trump and me. So they smear w/fake, anonymous sources and BS stories. They don’t want truth.” Hegseth told CBS News that he spoke to Trump this morning and “he said, ‘Keep going. Keep fighting.'”
Later today, on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, Hegseth reacted to an NBC News report that current and former colleagues at Fox News were concerned about his drinking, including instances in which they smelled alcohol on him before he went on the air.
“I have never had a drinking problem. No one has ever approached me and said, ‘You should really look at getting help for drinking,'” he said.
He denied the rape allegation, telling Kelly, “I’ve been honest about that encounter starting with law enforcement, fom the beginning. I was, I may have been drinking, but I was cognizant enough to remember every single detail. And I’m not here to say that my conduct was good.”
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