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.”
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.
