The mother of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled pick for Defense secretary, took to Fox News Wednesday morning to defend her son in her first public comments since it was reported that she once harshly confronted him in an email about his treatment of women.
“We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I’m not that mother and I hope people will hear that story today and the truth of that story,” Penelope Hegseth told “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy. “I am here to tell the truth. To tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to senators on the hill, especially female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and you will listen to Pete.”
Her plea also comes as Trump is considering nominating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as Defense secretary instead, should Hegseth’s nomination not pan out, POLITICO reported late Tuesday night, though no decision has been made. Hegseth told reporters Wednesday morning that the president-elect told him to “keep fighting.”
Since being named Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, Hegseth’s treatment of women has been at the forefront. A police report from 2017 made public last month detailed allegations of sexual assault against Hegseth, which he denied. He has also faced criticism for saying women should not serve in active combat.
On Tuesday, NBC News reported that some of Hegseth’s colleagues at Fox News were concerned about his drinking habits, which a spokesperson for the Trump transition team told the outlet were “completely unfounded and false.”
A New Yorker article published Sunday detailed Pete Hegseth’s time at two nonprofit advocacy groups, where he ultimately stepped down “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.” A lawyer for Hegseth said in response that the claims were “outlandish” and were “laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s.”
The New York Times published last week an email Penelope Hegseth sent her son in 2018 saying that he had “abused in some way” many women and telling him to take “an honest look at yourself.”
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the email, according to the Times. “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.”
On Wednesday, she backtracked from her remarks in the email, saying that her son had been going through a “difficult” divorce at the time and that she wrote the email “in haste” and apologized for sending it within two hours.
When Doocy asked if the allegations against her son were hard to hear as a parent, she said she didn’t believe the accusations.
“I don’t believe any of that is true. Any of it,” she said, after mentioning her role as a parent is to “correct.” “I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair today if I didn’t believe that about my son.”
When pressed again on what specifically in her email was not true, Hegseth’s mother said “he doesn’t misuse women.”
“He’s been through difficult things, I’m not going to list them by name,” she said.
Penelope Hegseth added that her son is “a changed man,” and was adamant that “Trump knows Pete. And he knows the Pete of today.”
“Listen with your heart to the truth of Pete,” she said.