President-elect Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued nominee for defense secretary, former Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, vowed to a senator that he won’t drink if he gets confirmed, according to reports.
He also insisted his critics were “jealous” of him.
Hegseth’s promise to stop drinking if he becomes secretary of defense followed reports that colleagues at Fox were concerned about his drinking and that he once chanted “kill all Muslims” during a drunken night out.
Co-workers said he smelled of alcohol before going on air and complained about being hungover, according to NBC News.
When Hegseth met Wednesday morning with the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Repubilcan Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, he promised Wicker that he wouldn’t drink if he’s confirmed, the senator told journalists.
“I think that’s probably a good idea,” Wicker said, The Hill reported.
But Wicker also emphasized that he still considers the stories about Hegseth’s drinking “allegations.”
Hegseth also met with the recently elected majority leader Sen. John Thune of South Dakota Wednesday.
Despite concerns about Hegseth’s drinking and his treatment of women, one of whom filed a police report accusing him of sexual assault at a time he was “visibly intoxicated,” according to his own lawyer, Hegseth has promised to keep fighting to become secretary of defense.
“I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said, ‘Keep going, keep fighting. I’m behind you all the way.’” he told CBS Wednesday. “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter. I’m here for the fighters. This is personal and passionate for me.”
Hegseth’s mother appeared on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, defending her son and addressing a 2018 email she wrote to her son accusing him of mistreating women. The New York Times obtained the email and published the details last week.
Hegseth has rejected all accusations of wrongdoing and claimed that a 2017 sexual encounter with the woman who accused him was rape was consensual.
A Trump transition official told NBC News that the drinking allegations were “completely unfounded and false.”
There are at least six Republican senators uncomfortable with the notion of having to vote for Hegseth, and the GOP can only afford to lose three.
But for now, Hegseth is pushing ahead, writing an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal with the headline: I’ve Faced Fire Before. I Won’t Back Down.
“I look forward to an honest confirmation hearing, not a press show trial based on anonymous accusations,” he wrote.
Hegseth appeared on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM program on Wednesday, during which he rejected the claims that he has a drinking problem and said that he didn’t rape the woman who accused him.
Hegseth also dismissed claims of financial mismanagement during his time atop a veterans’ advocacy organization, according to a report by The New Yorker.
He insisted the claims were being pushed by “disgruntled people who are fired for cause, who are jealous or want a little bit of retribution.”
Asked about the rape accusation, he responded: “Absolutely not. Absolutely not, I’ve been honest about that encounter, starting with law and enforcement. ... I may have been drinking, but I was cognizant of enough to remember every single detail.”
“I’m not here to say that my conduct was good,” added Hegseth, 44, who was married at the time. “Being in a hotel room with someone that’s, you know, not the person you’re with is not okay. I own up to that.”
He said he paid the woman a settlement because he had to, but that he now regrets doing so.
“I paid her because I had to, or at least I thought I did at the time,” he told Kelly. “I was duly married, I was up for potential jobs in the administration, so my profile was higher ... She got lawyers that reached out to mine and said, ‘If you don’t come forward and if you don’t pay money, then ultimately, we’re going to out him.’”
“I did it to protect my wife, I did it to protect my family, and I did it to protect my job, and it was a negotiation,” he added.
He also said he “never had a drinking problem” and that he hasn’t “sought counseling.”
He added that if confirmed, he’s “not going to have a drink at all,” saying that he wants the president-elect, senators, and American troops to know that he can be called at any time of day and that he’ll be “fully dialed in.”
This is the “biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it,” he told Kelly.
Kelly wrote in a lengthy post on X after the interview that “The @PeteHegseth nomination has been endangered entirely by anonymous sources. We have zero idea about the credibility of these sources since every single mud-slinger has remained (& been allowed to remain) unnamed.”
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Hegseth said he’s focused on “what Donald Trump asked me to do.”
“Your job is to bring a war-fighting ethos back to the enemy,” he added, according to NBC News. “Your job is to make sure that it’s lethality, lethality, lethality. Everything else is gone. Everything else that distracts from that shouldn’t be happening. That’s the message I’m hearing from senators in that advise and consent process. It’s been a wonderful process.”
Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, a veteran of the Iraq War and a survivor of sexual and domestic assault, wouldn’t say if she would support Hegseth after meeting with him.
“I appreciate Pete Hegseth’s service to our country, something we both share. Today, as part of the confirmation process, we had a frank and thorough conversation,” she wrote on X on Wednesday afternoon.
But Senate Armed Services Committee senior member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters his concerns over the Army veteran “deepen” daily.
“There’s more evidence by the day that he seems to be unfit to be secretary of Defense,” he said Tuesday.
Ernst and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have already been floated as possible replacements for Hegseth if his nomination fails. Others include Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Trump’s former ambassador to Japan, and Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, who’s currently Trump’s pick for national security adviser.
