Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, is on first glance a textbook Trump pick: An unqualified blowhard who will do the president-elect’s bidding without question.
On second glance, it becomes clear that, when afforded personal and professional opportunities, Hegseth has often failed spectacularly—and failed up, now potentially to a Cabinet appointment. An in-depth New Yorker expose this week reported that Hegseth has faced accusations that he mismanaged finances at veterans-focused organizations and non-profits he’s run (and run into the ground) in the past, got obnoxiously drunk at work events—including one episode in which an intoxicated Hegseth allegedly chanted “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” in an Ohio bar—and refused to level consequences on male employees who sexually harassed and even assaulted female ones. He was reportedly pushed out of one of these organization because of his actions.
When asked for comment by the New Yorker, Hegseth’s lawyer labeled the reporting “outlandish claims.”
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The Daily Beast has also reached out to Hegseth.
But at least some details we know about Hegseth and his past aren’t claims but confirmed facts. He, like Trump, has cheated on multiple wives and has children with multiple women, one of whom he impregnated while he was married to someone else. In 2020 he paid off a woman who had accused him of rape, he says to protect his career and reputation. The incident in question took place after Hegseth appeared at a conference for Republican women in 2017, with Hegseth’s accuser alleging he assaulted her in his hotel room despite her attempts to leave, and despite her “saying ‘no’ a lot.”
Hegseth has denied the allegations, arguing the sexual encounter was consensual, and no charges were brought against him following an investigation. His lawyer has also claimed the woman who accused him had brought a false accusation of rape before, though there is no evidence to support this.
His own mother called him an “abuser of women” in a 2018 email, writing that “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
She reportedly apologized to him immediately afterwards, and told the New York Times in a recent interview that she no longer agreed with the email’s sentiments. “I know my son. He is a good father, husband,” she said. But though she added that she had written “in anger, with emotion,” it’s hard to imagine a mother saying something like that solely in a fit of pique.
That a man like Hegseth is in this position in the first place is another indication of just how reckless and foolish Donald Trump really is: He seems to be stacking his cabinet with people who look good on Fox News, not people who can actually do their jobs.
In leading the Department of Defense, if confirmed, Hegseth will oversee an organization with a multi-billion-dollar budget and some two million employees. He will be in charge of the safety and wellbeing of all of the people who join the US military, many of them young—and many of them young women. Should the families of these recruits have faith in his leadership? Can they really trust him with their relatives’ lives? He has already made clear he will treat female soldiers differently, and that he doubts their abilities. As a talking head, he has used his perch to oppose female soldiers in combat and trans people in military service altogether—and has also defended war criminals.
His personal history suggests, quite frankly, that he is a national security liability. If Hegseth has a drinking problem–and many of the incidents reported about him involve alcohol–he would be deserving of empathy and second chances; it is a struggle as heartbreaking as any other addiction. But Hegseth has not suggested that he believes he has a problem. A stumbling drunk, as he has been reported to be on multiple occasions, is an easy mark. That makes him an exceptionally dangerous person not just to put in charge of the Defense Department, but to trust with any national secrets.
(In 1989, President George H. W. Bush’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Texas Senator John Tower, was voted down by his Senate peers for, in part, this very reason—his reputation as “a drunk and womanizer” was seen as a fatal flaw.)
Hegseth isn’t just unqualified. He seems virtually guaranteed to dangerously mismanage any organization he leads. Those in the armed forces deserve better. American taxpayers deserve better. And women who serve definitely deserve better than an accused rapist who doesn’t believe they are as capable as their male peers—one who, to add insult to injury, has certainly not earned his potential spot in a White House administration, but has rather ascended because an addled and shallow future president liked what he saw on TV.
