One of Donald Trump’s biggest fans and closest confidants at Fox News can’t quit the president—even during his own wedding.
Fox & Friends co-host and Iraq War vet Pete Hegseth and his fiancée, Fox Nation producer Jennifer Rauchet, are set to get married Friday and, according to three people who’ve been invited or been shown the invitation, the ceremony and reception will take place at a property owned by the president and his family business, specifically the Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey.
In a Wednesday post to Hegseth’s Instagram account, the Fox News pair posed for pictures during their wedding rehearsal at the Trump-owned golf course and clubhouse, sporting matching red Trump-referencing "Make Weddings Great Again" hats.
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It’s unclear whether the president, who knows both the bride and groom and who loves to crash weddings at his various private clubs, was invited or was planning to attend. Trump is scheduled to spend the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, about an hour away from the Central Jersey course.
This will be Hegseth’s third marriage and Rauchet’s second. The pair previously worked together at Fox & Friends, but their extramarital affair reportedly led to Rauchet being moved to another Trump-friendly show, Watters World. She also currently serves as executive producer of Fox Nation, the network’s subscription streaming service. The couple have one child together, and they each have three other children from previous marriages.
Fox News did not provide comment for this story, and Hegseth didn’t respond to a comment request by press time.
Hegseth isn’t just one of the president’s favorite cable-news personalities, he’s also a top informal policy adviser to Trump. The president has often called the Fox host—to discuss veterans, military, and political issues, but also to gossip about Fox—and had even considered during the presidential transition picking Hegseth for veterans affairs secretary.
For months this year, Hegseth privately and personally lobbied Trump to pardon U.S. servicemen accused and convicted of war crimes, as The Daily Beast first reported. Hegseth’s push, so far, hasn’t convinced Trump to go through with the pardons, though it did get him to draw more attention to the cases and publicly intervene in what he called “restrictive” confinement of one of the men, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher. Further, the White House did order the paperwork for the pardons be drawn up ahead of Memorial Day, according to a New York Times report.
Hegseth’s efforts didn’t come without blowback, however. Shortly after news broke of his behind-the-scenes role (and following his apparent confirmation of the story on Twitter), Fox brass reprimanded him, two sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. (In his job as a prominent Fox host, Hegseth had regularly covered the cases of Gallagher and the other men, all without disclosing to viewers that he was directly advising Trump on those matters.)
Around this time, Mediaite published a story in which “one Fox News source” chided Hegseth, saying, “His lobbying effort to take credit for these pardons is really transparent,” and, “It’s very obvious he’s on a little media tour.” That Fox source ominously noted that Hegseth’s secret campaign had not gone unnoticed by the network’s higher-ups.
After his internal slap on the wrist, Hegseth told associates that he now had to be more discreet and covert about his relationship with, and advising of, the president, the two sources told The Daily Beast.
