WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick vowed Tuesday to foster a “warrior culture” and confronted allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking and questions about his views on women in combat during a heated Senate hearing.
Pete Hegseth repeatedly deflected the various misconduct allegations and instead focused on his own combat experience in the Army National Guard as senators determine whether the combat veteran and former Fox News host is fit to lead the U.S. military.
“It’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm,” Hegseth said in his opening remarks.
Asked directly about the sexual assault allegation, Hegseth dismissed it as a “smear campaign,” as he did in response to a rapid-fire series of questions about his personal behavior and complaints of drinking on the job.
Senators including Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, spent hours probing the concerns surrounding Hegseth, with Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee acknowledging the “unconventional” choice.
The top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, however, called the allegations “extremely alarming” and said flatly: “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.”
Hegseth, 44, comes from a new generation of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and his military experience is widely viewed as an asset. But he also brings a jarring record of past actions and statements, including about women, minorities and “woke” generals.
Hegseth also does not have the credentials typical of a defense secretary, raising questions about his ability to manage an organization with nearly 2.1 million service members, about 780,000 civilians and a budget of roughly $850 billion.
The more than four-hour hearing launched a weeklong marathon as the Republican-led Senate is rushing to have some of Trump’s nominees ready to be confirmed as soon as Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. Almost all Republicans must support Trump’s pick if Democrats oppose.
Hegseth faces perhaps the most difficult path to confirmation, but GOP allies are determined to turn him into a cause celebre for Trump’s governing approach amid the nation’s culture wars. In the audience were cadres of men wearing clothing expressing support for veterans or service in the military, but also protesters who disrupted proceedings and were removed from the room.
Pressed on his opposition to diversity initiatives, Hegseth agreed that the military “was a forerunner in courageous racial integration.” But he argued that modern diversity and inclusion policies “divide” current troops and don’t prioritize “meritocracy.”
In a striking scene, several female Democratic senators grilled Hegseth over his comments that women should “straight up” not be in combat roles, a view he has softened since his nomination.
In one exchange, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told Hegseth: “You will have to change how you see women to do this job.”
King questioned Hegseth repeatedly on whether the military would continue to follow the Geneva Conventions, the post-World War II set of international laws that governs how soldiers and civilians are treated during war. Hegseth acknowledged that they were the law of the land but then said soldiers would be allowed to fight “decisively.”
“What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield,” he said.
Many senators have not yet met with Hegseth and most do not have access to his FBI background check, as only committee leaders were briefed on its findings. Reed called it “insufficient.”
Republicans took turns shoring up the nominee, with Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., saying “we’ve all made mistakes,” and coaxing Hegseth to say something nice about his wife and children.
Hegseth was largely unknown on Capitol Hill when Trump tapped him for the top Pentagon job. A former co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend,” he had been a contributor with the network since 2014 and apparently caught the eye of the president-elect, who is an avid consumer of television and the news channel.
Hegseth attended Princeton University and served in the Army National Guard from 2002 to 2021, deploying to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2011 and earning two Bronze Stars.
In 2017, a woman told police that Hegseth sexually assaulted her, according to a detailed investigative report recently made public. Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing and told police at the time that the encounter at a Republican women’s event in California was consensual. He later paid the woman a confidential settlement to head off a potential lawsuit.
If confirmed, Hegseth would take over a military juggling an array of crises on the global stage and domestic challenges in military recruitment, retention and ongoing funding.
Story by Lisa Mascaro, Tara Copp and Matt Brown. BDN writers Michael Shepherd and Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
