Clouds gather over Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Trump’s Pentagon chief
Washington: Donald Trump’s controversial pick to run the Pentagon may be forced to withdraw amid growing concerns among Republicans about the allegations against him of sexual assault and aggressive drunkenness.
But Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth has vowed he would “never back down”, even as Trump was said to be considering other people for the job of defence secretary – including Florida governor and one-time rival Ron DeSantis.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defence secretary (left), is joined by his wife Jennifer Rauchet, right, as they depart a meeting with Republican House members.Credit: AP
Days after MAGA loyalist Matt Gaetz failed to get the support he needed to become Trump’s attorney-general, a group of senators appears to be holding out on Hegseth, a 44-year-old military veteran whose own mother was so alarmed by her son’s treatment of women that she voiced her concerns in an email to him in 2018.
The email – parts of which were published in The New York Times this week – was written the year after Hegseth was also the subject of a police complaint by a woman who alleged he raped her at a Republican Party event in California; an incident he insists was consensual.
In her email, Penelope Hegseth urged her son to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself”.
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she added. “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.”
As Hegseth returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) to lobby senators for the third consecutive day, his mother appeared on Fox News to explain the email – which she said she wrote “in haste” while he was “going through a very difficult divorce” – and insist he was a “changed man”.
“About two hours later, I retracted it with an apology, but nobody’s seen that,” she said, taking aim at the media for publishing the details.
Hegseth also went into damage control, appearing on The Megyn Kelly Show to reject all the allegations against him as “ridiculous”, including fresh reports in The New Yorker on Sunday that he was forced to step down from two veterans groups he ran due to mismanagement of funds, sexual impropriety and excessive drinking.
Pete Hegseth has vowed he would “never back down”, even as Trump was said to be considering other people for the job of defence secretary.Credit: AP
Insisting that Trump told him, “I’ve got your back,” Hegseth also posted on X: “The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of @realDonaldTrump – and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth. Our warriors never back down, & neither will I.”
The pushback kicked off another busy day for the Trump transition team, with the president-elect announcing the return of convicted felon Peter Navarro to serve as his senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing.
Navarro was Trump’s trade adviser during his first term and was released from prison in July after he served a sentence of about four months for defying a congressional subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021.
According to a social media post by the president-elect, he will now be asked to “successfully advance and communicate the Trump Manufacturing, Tariff, and Trade Agendas”.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and one-time rival of Donald Trump is said to be still in the mix for the defence secretary role.Credit: Bloomberg
In a flurry of announcements, Trump also tapped businessman and army veteran Daniel Driscoll to be his secretary of the army and billionaire and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman, an associate of Elon Musk, as the next head of NASA.
But Hegseth currently faces the toughest battle to get confirmed by the Senate, where Trump cannot afford to lose more than three Republican votes (assuming all the Democrats vote in a bloc) for his nominees to get the green light.
Among the apparent holdouts is Republican senator Joni Ernst, the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate and a victim of sexual assault. Ernst – who Hegseth is meeting later – is also someone likely to take issue with his comments last month that women should not serve in combat.
Fellow Republican Kevin Cramer has raised concerns about Hegseth’s drinking, telling CNN on Wednesday: “One of the things I’d love to hear is that he’s committed to not drinking. Being familiar with the problems of alcoholism and the dumb things we do when we drink too much, it’d be really nice if he could set that one aside for good, if not at least through his term as secretary.”
But Hegseth remained defiant as he went from meeting to meeting on Capitol Hill in a bid to shore up more support, particularly from members of the Armed Services Committee who will oversee his nomination process.
Speaking to reporters after discussions with the incoming Senate majority leader John Thune and the Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker, Hegseth said Trump had given him a clear directive when he was tapped to be defence secretary: “to bring a war-fighting ethos back to the Pentagon”.
He did not take questions about the allegations against him – or reports that other candidates were being considered to replace him – other than to refer people to his interview with Megyn Kelly from earlier in the day.
Trump and his team are yet to comment on reports that he is considering replacements for Hegseth, including DeSantis, who appeared with him earlier this week at a ceremony in West Palm Beach to honour three fallen sheriff’s deputies.
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