On Wednesday afternoon, Pete Hegseth sat down with Iowa senator Joni Ernst for a conversation in her office on Capitol Hill. Hegseth, the first choice of Donald Trump for defence secretary and a self-described “warfighter”, had spent the day on what many believe is an uphill battle to persuade Republican senators that they can overlook allegations of sexual assault, harassment and persistent drunken behaviour to confirm his nomination as one of the most powerful military figures in the world.
Ernst is also a warfighter: a veteran of Kuwait and Iraq and the first woman war veteran elected to the US Senate. Ernst has spoken of the sexual harassment she was subject to during her time in the military. After the meeting was over, she offered a single line to reporters stalking the corridors of the Senate.
“It was a frank and thorough conversation,” she said.
Whether that is good or bad news for Hegseth remains to be seen. Wednesday was about crisis public relations for the former Fox News show host whose professional record and private life have been heavily scrutinised since he was selected during a wave of eye-opening cabinet picks by Trump.
He has acknowledged that he paid a settlement to a woman who made a sexual assault claim dating to 2017 while denying the claim: Hegseth later explained, through his lawyer’s statement, that it was during the Me Too movement and he was concerned he would lose his job at Fox. The complainant has no recourse to give her version of events as she is prohibited from doing so by having signed a non-disclosure agreement.
An in-depth New Yorker report published this week detailed a series of whistleblower accounts of repeated intoxications while Hegseth was in charge of two non-profit military groups, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. A separate report included details of an email his mother Penelope had written to her son in 2018, in the midst of his second divorce, stating that he while she loved him, she could have “no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego”.
Mrs Hegseth also made it clear that she had, within hours, sent her son a follow-up email apologising for the content of the original message. On Wednesday morning, she made an appearance on Fox News’s morning show to reiterate that point.
“I wrote that in haste. I wrote that with deep emotions. I wrote that out of love and about two hours later I retracted it with an apology email,” she said before condemning what she regarded as the threatening tactics used by media organisations who contacted her for comment.
Pete Hegseth also gave a media interview on Wednesday, sitting down with Megyn Kelly on her podcast to emphasise that the allegations against him are baseless and that he had been warned by Trump that he would “need to be tough as s**t” to get through this process; Hegseth believes he has Trump’s full backing, saying that the incoming president told him: “You go out and meet those senators and I’ve got your back.”
The president-elect has already seen his first choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, step down after it became clear that he would not have the support of the majority of party senators. Hegseth’s contention is that he is the victim of “the art of the smear” brought about by those who wished to retain the status quo.
“They knew in the picks that he made he is bringing in change agents,” Hegseth told Kelly.
“If you wanted another admiral or general or lawyer or CEO to run the defence department – we have tried that before. He [Trump] said: I want lethality, lethality, lethality. I want readiness, accountability, standards, warfighting. Pete. That’s me, that’s you. Clean house of the woke crap. All that climate stuff and the DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and the genderism – get rid of it. Let’s bring the Pentagon back to the people.”
Hegseth, a Minnesotan, claimed that his meetings with various senators have convinced him he has the requisite support to get through. He still has to meet Republican senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) who will seek explanations for the allegations. He has been working out of the office of Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty, who voiced his support on Wednesday.
“He is here to change the Pentagon, getting away from pronouns and social experiments and fixing a broken pyramid system. We’ve got a retention crisis and we’ve got a recruitment crisis and an inspirational leader like Pete is just the person to fix this.”
But Hagerty is among the speculative names mentioned as replacement candidates under consideration by Trump if it becomes apparent that Hegseth cannot make a substantive case for himself on Capitol Hill. Joni Ernst is also in that group, while Trump’s primary-election adversary Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, is regarded as a front-runner in the list of alternatives.
And Hegseth will have to overcome a heavy mood of Senate scepticism. South Carolina senator Lyndsey Graham, usually in step with Donald Trump, on Tuesday described some of the articles detailing Hegseth’s conduct as “very disturbing”.
“Some of the things have to be addressed, and we’ll see. Leadership comes from the top. And I want to make sure that every young woman who joins the military feels respected and welcomed.”
In his interview with Megyn Kelly, Hegseth claimed that “he never had a drinking problem” before detailing how he dealt with the “demons on the battlefield”.
“Sometimes, it’s with a bottle,” he said. It emerged that Hegseth has told the incoming Senate armed services committee chairman, Roger Wicker, that he would not drink if his appointment was approved.
Apart from the fog of scandal which Hegseth is attempting to clear, he also faces grave reservations about his suitability and experience for such a heavyweight military role. One of Hegseth’s most controversial positions is that military women should not serve in combat roles as, he said in a previous interview, “it hasn’t been effective and has made fighting more complicated”.
Illinois Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth sustained severe injuries when the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting was shot down in Iraq in 2004. She was later the recipient of a Purple Heart and pointed out after Hegseth was chosen by Trump that the US military could not go to war without the 220,000 women currently serving in the military.
“He has been out there saying women are not as strong; the ones who are in those roles have met the very same standards as men and have passed vigorous testing. He’s just flat out wrong. He was a pretty low-ranking guy in the military and never had a command position. So this is a man who is inordinately unqualified for the position. Remember that the Pentagon is three million servicemen and women and civilians with over a $900 billion budget. He has never run anything near to that size.”
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