Ever since Donald Trump first announced he wanted Fox News personality Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense, there has been a torrent of information coming out about him and his alleged tendencies towards public intoxication, sexual harassment and sexual assault. This is not terrifically surprising. Frankly, what would be surprising would be if Trump nominated anyone to any position who was remotely qualified or did not have a similar history. The fact that Hegseth did, at one point, serve in the military makes him too qualified by half to serve as Trump’s Defense Secretary. (We’d say the credible sexual assault allegation might have helped him get the nomination, but Trump was reportedly blindsided by it, angry not that it existed, but that he wasn’t informed about it beforehand.)
Nevertheless, multiple reports have now surfaced about Hegseth’s disturbing history of alleged abuse towards women, including a letter to him from his own mother on the occasion of his divorce from his second wife.
You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and 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.
I am not a saint, far from it.. so don’t throw that in my face,. but your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out. […]
I don’t want an answer to this… I don’t want to debate with you. You twist and abuse everything I say anyway. But… 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…
Since the release of the letter, Penelope Hegseth has come forward to say that nothing in the letter is true, that publishing it is “disgusting,” and that she apologized to her darling son soon after writing it.
Of course, the part about him sleeping around is definitely true, given that this was the reason for both of his divorces — he even had a kid with his current wife while married to his second wife. Perhaps Penelope Hegseth has just decided that this was no longer a problem, for some reason!
Dare I note, however, that this is bad either way. Either Penelope Hegseth wasn’t lying in the email or she was, which would mean that Hegseth was raised by someone who normalized attacking their own son with pernicious lies for no apparent reason whatsoever, even without an audience.
On the heels of the letter is a Jane Mayer article from The New Yorker, detailing more of Hegseth’s alleged poor treatment of women and his tendency towards alcohol abuse, both of which led to his ousting from two veterans’ nonprofits he led, Concerned Veterans for America and Vets For Freedom.
Here are just some of the highlights:
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”
Things were not much better when he was leading the Koch Brothers-adjacent astroturf group Veterans For Freedom, which claimed to represent veterans who loved the Iraq War and wanted more of it.
In fact, under his leadership, V.F.F. soon ran up enormous debt, and financial records indicate that, by the end of 2008, it was unable to pay its creditors. The group’s primary donors became concerned that their money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses, including rumors of parties that “could politely be called trysts,” as [a] former associate of the group put it. [An] early sympathizer said, “I was not the first to hear that there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace.”
Meanwhile, the finances of V.F.F. grew so dire that the group’s donors hatched a plan to take control away from Hegseth. The donors’ representatives hired a forensic accountant to review the books. The findings were appalling. In January, 2009, Hegseth sent a letter to the donors admitting that, as of that day, the group had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and $434,833 in unpaid bills. The group also had run up credit-card debts of as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. Hegseth said that he took full responsibility for the mess, but added that, unless the donors gave him more funds, V.F.F. would have to file for bankruptcy and close down.
I have to say that I would actually prefer that our tax dollars meant for “defense” go towards Pete Hegseth’s trips to strip clubs than to bombs destined to murder innocent civilians. It’s certainly not a thing I’d choose to spend money on, but it’s certainly less harmful on a macro scale than “actual bombs” are.
Of course, Hegseth has also been accused of violence, by an “organizer working with [a] Republican Women’s group” who said he may have drugged her, and that he sexually assaulted her after she tried to keep him away from another woman he was creeping on. He later paid the woman off to keep quiet about the whole thing, because, he claims, he was worried about his career at Fox News.
“Boy, this sure is embarrassing for Donald Trump! Surely people will be appalled at this pick!” you may be thinking, if you are an especially naïve time traveler from the year 2014 or before. But that’s not what is happening.
What is happening is that people are characterizing Hegseth’s behavior as typical of an infantry soldier blowing off steam post-deployment or simply accusing The New Yorker of making up the whole story themselves in order to make Hegseth look bad.
I do still think it’s a little cute that they think any of us would think accusations of this sort would be a turn-off for them, when they have been very clear that they are firmly on the side of those with substantiated accusations of sexual assault and corruption against them. We all know they only oppose these things when the only evidence they have of them is an anonymous weirdo on 8chan or someone who claims that angels talk to them or whatever. Actual accusations by actual human beings are so mundane!
I’ve never been an accelerationist — I have no delusions that terrible choices made by Trump would lead to any grand revolution — but there is a part of me that is fine with letting these creeps smoke the whole carton and see how they feel after however many years of unmitigated Trump and friends. The only problem with that, of course, is that we’re trapped in this garbage fire with them.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
These people openly campaigned on degenerate misogyny. This shit is only the beginning.
Pete Hegseth, proud owner of a face only his mother could not-so-convincingly pretend to love.