(The Center Square) – President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Defense said Wednesday he won’t back down after a cascade of criticism and a leaked letter from his mother in which she called him an “abuser of women.”
Pete Hegseth, 44, faced scrutiny after a 2017 sexual encounter in which a woman told police the former Fox News anchor blocked the door of a hotel room in California and sexually assaulted her. Hegseth has denied the allegation and said that the encounter was consensual. Hegseth reached an undisclosed settlement with the woman in 2023.
In a second matter, Hegseth’s mother, Penelope, castigated her son for “abusive behavior” toward women for years in a 2018 email that the New York Times published last week. She has since apologized to her son and called publication of the email “disgusting.”
Hegseth said he won’t back down.
“The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down,” he wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal. “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.”
Hegseth said he looks forward to a confirmation hearing in the Senate.
“Talk to those who served with me in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan or the National Guard. They support me, and I’m honored by that,” he wrote. “I have never backed down from a fight and won’t back down from this one. I am grateful President-elect Trump chose me to lead the Defense Department, and I look forward to an honest confirmation hearing with our distinguished senators –not a show trial in the press.”
Hegseth said he still has Trump’s support Wednesday morning on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM program, “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
“I spoke to him this morning, Megyn. I mean, he’s amazing. He’s a fighter. He’s been through this himself. And he told me – the last thing he said to me well, two things he said to me when I left his office, when he chose me, was, well, besides what he said about being a war fighter, we can get into that – was you’re going to need to be tough as sh-t. You’re going to need to be tough as sh*t,” Hegseth said. “But he paused again as I was walking away and said, but you’re the man for this moment. I chose you because you’re the guy that’s going to put the war fighters first. We haven’t had that. We need a guy that’s kicked down doors and understands the consequences of war and why us deterring war, fighting it, and winning it is important to him. He gets it. And we can get into the policy of all of that. But ultimately he reiterated the same thing this morning. ‘Hey Pete, I got your back. It’s a fight. They’re coming after you get after it.’ I think he’ll be delighted that we’re talking today.”
NBC News reported Tuesday that Trump was considering replacing Hegseth with another candidate, possibly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Hegseth would lead the largest and most complex federal agency with an annual budget of $840 billion and 3.4 million military and civilian employees.
