WASHINGTON — Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. military, will be among the first of the incoming administration’s Cabinet hopefuls to appear before the Senate this week with a tough confirmation battle expected.
The former Army infantry officer and Fox News weekend co-host has faced a barrage of questions, concerns and outright opposition over his resume, reported incidents of drunkenness and an allegation of sexual assault, his views on women and LGBTQ people in the military, renaming bases honoring Confederate leaders, downplaying efforts to root out extremists in the military, and his advocacy on behalf of U.S. service members accused of and convicted of war crimes.
But Trump has stuck with his Pentagon nominee, even as he was forced to abandon another high-profile Cabinet pick in former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who hoped to be attorney general. And the hard-right factions of the Republican Party who helped return president-elect to power have rallied around Hegseth in the face of Democratic objections and amid Trump’s public campaign for American expansion across the Western hemisphere. Republican senators, who will soon hold a 53-seat majority, have largely followed suit.
“To get wokeness out of our military to restore the unquestioned strength and fighting spirit of the American armed forces, I have appointed Pete Hegseth to be our next secretary of defense. He's going to be great,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix last month. “I've interviewed with him a lot on Fox. And all he ever wanted to talk about was the military.”
Hegseth will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m. ET. The committee has 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats and oversees the military, with the responsibility of recommending a president’s defense secretary nominee to the Senate for a full vote. If every Democrat and Democrat-aligned independent votes against Hegseth, Republicans can only spare three no-votes from their own ranks on a given nominee, with incoming Vice President JD Vance available to break ties and Ohio’s Republican governor planning to appoint a replacement for Vance’s recently vacated Senate seat.
Two of the committee’s members are women combat veterans — Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the latter of whom lost both her legs when her Blackhawk helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq. Hegseth has to an extent walked back his long-standing, oft-repeated insistence that women should not serve in combat roles.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he said in a podcast on Nov. 7.
Women have a place in the military, he said, just not in special operations, artillery, infantry and armor units. After his nomination, Hegseth said on the “Megyn Kelly Show” that he cares only that military standards are maintained. Women already serve in combat, he said, and, “if we have the right standard and women meet that standard, roger. Let's go.”
Ernst, a Republican and retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel, has also spoken publicly about being a survivor of sexual assault and has fought for years to prevent sexual assault in the military.
But she appears to be ready to back Hegseth despite the sexual assault allegation and reports about his mistreatment of women, including from his mother who wrote in a 2018 email to her son that he was “an abuser of women” who “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” His mother, Penelope Hegseth, has since said her son is a “changed man” and expressed her support for his ascension to secretary of defense.
After Hegseth was nominated by Trump, the city government in Monterey, Calif., released a 22-page 2017 police report detailing a sexual assault allegation against Hegseth by a woman attending a Republican women’s conference where the then-Fox News host was a keynote speaker. Hegseth has repeatedly denied the assault allegation and insisted that the encounter was consensual. His attorney has acknowledged a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement to avoid a lawsuit.
After Ernst met with Hegseth last month, she issued a statement on their “encouraging conversations” and said that she would “support Pete through this process” in part due to his promise to “prioritize and strengthen my work to prevent sexual assault within the ranks.” She added she looked forward “to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.” The woman who accused Hegseth of sexual assault has not been publicly identified and is listed as “Jane Doe” in the police report.
Hegseth has conceded that he was a “serial cheater,” but said in December that he “truly was changed by [his current wife Jennifer Rauchet] and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” and is now a different man. He has also promised not to drink if confirmed as defense secretary after numerous reports that he was forced out of two veterans nonprofits that he ran over allegations of drunkenness, inappropriate behavior toward female staffers and financial mismanagement.
The 44-year-old Hegseth’s limited experience leading any organization will almost certainly be a topic of discussion at his confirmation hearing as he attempts to lead the world’s most powerful military and its massive budget that’s expected to reach $1 trillion annually in Trump’s term.
“The Secretary of Defense’s power and authority over our military is second only to the President of the United States, our nation’s commander-in-chief,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, wrote to committee Chair Sen. Roger Wicker last week. “I am deeply concerned that the Senate Armed Services Committee is considering the nomination of Pete Hegseth for this critically significant position without full information regarding his capacity and experience to lead our military.”
“I remain particularly disturbed about well-documented allegations of Mr. Hegseth’s serious financial abuse and gross misconduct” at the nonprofits Concerned Veterans of America and Veterans for Freedom, Blumenthal added, demanding the committee move to obtain internal correspondence and financial records from the organizations, “particularly concerning credit card transactions.”
Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s top Democrat, were briefed on Hegseth’s FBI background check on Friday, but other members of the committee were not given access, according to the New York Times, a situation Blumenthal said gave the “appearance of a cover-up.”
Newly anointed Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Trump that he believes Hegseth has the votes he needs, according to CBS News, but his office publicly declined to confirm the conversation.
Only one other Cabinet nominee in the last 60 years has gone through the confirmation process only to be rejected by the Senate. Texas Republican Sen. John Tower, President-elect George H.W. Bush's choice for defense secretary, was voted down in 1989 after contentious confirmation hearings looking into allegations of Tower's drinking and womanizing.
Hearings will kick off Tuesday with the relevant committees vetting Hegseth and Doug Collins, a former Georgia congressman and Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was originally also scheduled to appear for a hearing on Tuesday on his nomination to lead the Interior Department, but the hearing was moved to Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.