MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough thinks Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled pick for secretary of defense, “needs help and not the nuclear codes.”
Scarborough’s remarks on Wednesday’s Morning Joe came the morning after some of Hegseth’s former Fox News colleagues expressed concern to NBC News about his alleged drinking habits, claiming that he would speak openly about being hungover and sleep deprived before going on air and even showing up to work smelling of booze.
A spokesperson for the Trump transition team called the allegations “disgusting” and “unfounded,” while some of Hegseth’s other Fox News colleagues have also denounced the reported claims.
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That report followed a New Yorker article over the weekend that also included allegations about Hegseth’s previous drinking habits while running veteran advocacy groups, including that he’d had to be carried out of work events and restrained from dancing with strippers, and that he’d yelled anti-Muslim statements, among other alleged wrongdoing. A lawyer for Hegseth told the magazine the claims were “outlandish” and blamed them on a “petty and jealous disgruntled former associate.”
On Morning Joe, Scarborough claimed the show had heard last week from a “reliable source inside of Fox News” corroborating some of the claims in the NBC report. He later said that “two things can be true at one time,” praising Hegseth’s military service. The former Fox & Friends Weekend host served in Afghanistan and Iraq as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, and also served at Guantanamo Bay.
“Everything that we’ve read about Pete Hegseth and his first tours in combat zones suggests that he did a great job, honorable, and in uniform was respected by those around him in his early tours,” Scarborough said. “We also know though, a lot of men and women come back from war zones and perhaps they have PTSD. I’m not suggesting that’s the case here. I don’t know what the case is here, but it is very obvious by seeing the pattern of behavior since he returned from combat that he—obviously—he needs help.”
He went on to reference an email Hegseth’s mother reportedly wrote to her son in 2018 during his divorce from his second wife. In it, she called him an “abuser of women,” according to The New York Times. “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth reportedly wrote in the message. She disavowed the sentiments of the email to the Times in an interview and said they had “never been true,” instead calling Hegseth a good father and husband.
“I know that now she’s trying to be a good mom and trying to defend her son after that’s out,” Scarborough said. “But what she wrote lines up with what people said before, during, and now after. So this appears to be—and I think the Trump transition team believes this—this appears to be a man who needs help and not the nuclear codes.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Trump transition team for comment.
This week’s allegations related to Hegseth’s drinking come after he already faced scrutiny over an allegation of sexual assault in 2017. Hegseth was never charged and maintains that the encounter was consensual, with his lawyer telling The Washington Post that Hegseth paid an undisclosed sum to his accuser as part of a nondisclosure agreement over fears that her allegations could lead to him being fired from Fox.
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is considering dropping Hegseth as his pick for defense secretary and replacing him with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
