Who Is Pete Hegseth—Trump’s Pick for Defense Secretary?

Updated: November 13, 2024 8:15 PM EST | Originally published: November 12, 2024 9:45 PM EST

In picking Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, President-elect Donald Trump has selected a military veteran and popular conservative media personality with a large following of his own.

Hegseth, 44, has developed a close rapport with Trump, who also reportedly considered him for a post in his first administration. Hegseth has lobbied Trump to release service members accused of war crimes.

Here are a few things to know about Hegseth.

He called to “clean house” at the Pentagon

Hegseth complains in his latest book that “woke” generals and the leaders of the elite service academies have left the military dangerously weak and “effeminate” by promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. He says rank and file soldiers are undermined by “feckless civilian leaders and foolish brass,” adding that “the next commander in chief will need to clean house.”

He mocks and misgenders transgender servicemembers and says the military is turning off recruits.

“America’s white sons and daughters are walking away, and who can blame them,” he writes in The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.

Like Trump, he espouses a traditional view of masculinity, writing that men are innately drawn to fight, compete and prove their strength. Also like Trump, he is sharply critical of NATO allies that he says are not spending enough on their own defense, calling them “self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to.”

He calls the political left, “America’s domestic enemies” and “America-wreckers.”

Hegseth’s writing is contemptuous of the policies, laws and treaties that constrain warfighters on the battlefield, from restrictive rules of engagement to the Geneva Conventions, which he suggests are outdated against enemies who don’t abide by them.

He has little patience for the moral questions surrounding war. Of the Americans who dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end World War II, he writes, “They won. Who cares.”

He calls to rename Defense Department back to its original moniker, the War Department, and implement a 10-year ban on generals working for defense contractors after retiring from the military.

He’s gone viral—with an ax

Hegseth went viral and was later sued after he struck a U.S. Army master sergeant in the arm with an errant ax throw during a 2015 Fox & Friends segment.

Video of the incident shows the ax flying over a target and hitting Jeffrey Prosperie, a drummer in West Point’s Hellcats field band, who had been invited to the show for the 240th anniversary of the Army’s founding.

Records show that the lawsuit was discontinued in 2019, and Brandon Cotter, Prosperie’s attorney, said in an email Wednesday that “The parties have resolved the matter and will make no further comment.” Prosperie did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Fox News, which was also named in the lawsuit, called the incident “unfortunate and completely unintentional,” said it immediately apologized to him and offered medical assistance, which he declined.

Prosperie has since returned to the network to perform with the West Point band.

He’s questioned the role of women in combat

Hegseth has pushed for making the military more lethal and said that allowing women to serve in combat roles hurts that effort.

“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, means casualties are worse,” Hegseth said during an interview last week on The Shawn Ryan Show podcast to promote his new book. “I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles—it hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”

While he said that diversity in the military is a strength, Hegseth also said it was because minority and white men can perform similarly, something he said isn’t true for women.

By opening combat slots to women, “we’ve changed the standards in putting them there, which means you’ve changed the capability of that unit,” Hegseth said in the podcast interview.

Since then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in 2016, women have successfully passed the military’s grueling tests to become Green Berets and Army Rangers, and the Naval Special Warfare’s test to serve as a combatant-craft crewman—the boat operators who transport Navy SEALs and conduct their own classified missions at sea.

He’s defended service members accused of war crimes

In 2019, Hegseth urged Trump to pardon U.S. service members who had been accused of war crimes. He advocated for the servicemen’s cases on his show and online, interviewing relatives on Fox News. He posted on social media that pardons from Trump “would be amazing,” and added hashtags with the names of those accused to reporting mentioning his private lobbying of the then-President.

The effort was successful, with Trump that year pardoning a former U.S. Army commando set to stand trial in the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker, as well as a former Army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire upon three Afghans, killing two. Trump also ordered a promotion for a decorated Navy SEAL convicted of posing with a dead Islamic State captive in Iraq.

He’s a military veteran

Hegseth has served in the military, although he lacks senior military or national security experience.

After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantanamo Bay.

He was formerly head of the Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and also unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012. According to his Fox News bio, he has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

As Trump formulated his first Cabinet following his 2016 win, he reportedly considered Hegseth to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. He again considered Hegseth when Secretary David Shulkin faced criticism before his ouster in 2018.

He’s a Fox News personality and author

Co-host of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend, Hegseth has been a contributor to the network for a decade. He developed a friendship with Trump through the President-elect’s regular appearances on the show. In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson complimented Hegseth’s military knowledge, saying his “insights and analysis especially about the military resonated deeply with our viewers.”

He’s also written a number of books, several for the network’s publishing imprint, including The War on Warriors. In announcing Hegseth’s nomination, Trump complimented that book, noting its “nine weeks on the New York Times best-sellers list, including two weeks at NUMBER ONE.”

He would come to the job during a series of global crises

Hegseth would lead the Pentagon with burgeoning conflicts on multiple fronts, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies, the push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea.

While the Pentagon is considered a key job in any administration, defense secretary was a tumultuous post during Trump’s first term. Five men held the job during Trump’s four years.

Trump’s relationship with his civilian and military leaders during those years was fraught with tension, confusion and frustration, as they struggled to temper or even simply interpret presidential tweets and pronouncements that blindsided them with abrupt policy decisions they weren’t prepared to explain or defend.

Many of the generals who worked in his first administration—both on active duty and retired—have slammed him as unfit to serve in the Oval Office. He has condemned them in return.

—Meg Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina. Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Michael R. Sisak in New York, Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.

Who Is Pete Hegseth? Trump Taps Fox & Friends Co-Host to Run Defense Department