Washington — President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, is showing defiance amid misconduct allegations as support for his confirmation appeared to be in doubt. There are now several candidates under consideration to replace him as Trump’s intended nominee, sources familiar with the transition tell CBS News, among them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst.
But the embattled former Fox News host on Wednesday pushed back on reports that Trump is considering other candidates for defense secretary. On Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning, as he continued to visit Republican members of Congress, Hegseth told CBS News that he does not intend to withdraw his name from consideration. He also said he spoke with Trump Wednesday morning, and the president-elect encouraged him to keep fighting.
“I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said, ‘Keep going, keep fighting. I’m behind you all the way,'” Hegseth said. “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter. I’m here for the fighters. This is personal and passionate for me.”
In an interview with conservative commentator Megyn Kelly on Wednesday, Hegseth said he had spoken with Trump earlier in the day and that the incoming president had told him, “I’ve got your back.” On reports of the possibility that DeSantis could replace him as defense chief nominee, he told Kelly, “It’s all the president’s choice. I spoke to the president this morning. He said, I’m his guy.”
Despite the acrimony between DeSantis and Trump during the primary campaign, the Florida governor is interested in the job, according to two sources familiar with DeSantis’ thinking. His second and final term as governor ends in January 2027. Trump has already announced a series of Cabinet nominees who hail from Florida, including Sen. Marco Rubio, for secretary of state. Although serving as defense secretary would pose some political risk, DeSantis believes it would position him well for a presidential run in 2028, the source said.
Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” weekend co-host and Army veteran, has been meeting with Senate Republicans in recent weeks to build support for his confirmation. But reports in recent days that detailed alleged sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement at veterans’ charities, repeated intoxication and infidelity appeared to be softening his support. Some Senate Republicans have called the allegations “disturbing” and said they came as a surprise.
Still, Hegseth on Wednesday told reporters at the Capitol his meetings with Senate Republicans have been “a wonderful process.” In his interview with Kelly, Hegseth said, “No one has looked me in the eye and said, ‘I have concerns and I can’t vote for you.’ In fact, most have said, ‘Let’s take a picture, and I’m behind you all the way.”
Hegseth also defended himself in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. Amid reports about his removal as the head of a veterans’ charity over allegations of financial mismanagement, intoxication, sexual misconduct and fostering a toxic work climate, Hegseth wrote of his work for that organization, Concerned Veterans for America.
“We fought entrenched interests and mobilized veterans and patriotic Americans across the country,” he said, denying reports of any misconduct and accusing the media of publishing falsehoods.
“We had hundreds of employees and thousands of volunteers—yet based on the anonymous accusations of a few disgruntled employees, the legacy media has made it sound as if we ran a college frat house,” he wrote. “That’s just untrue.”
Hegseth also said that he left CVA over “an internal difference of opinion about its future. I wanted to engage in foreign policy; our donors didn’t.” And he added that the group’s leadership “wrote me a glowing letter when I left.”
In his interview with Kelly, Hegseth addressed the sexual assault allegation that emerged in late November. He responded “absolutely not” when asked if he had raped a woman in a Monterey, California, hotel in 2017. He admitted that it would have once been a fair characterization to call him a “serial cheater” but says he has changed. “I may have been drinking, but I was cognizant enough to remember every single detail. And I’m not here to say that my conduct was good,” he said. “Being in a hotel room with someone that’s not the person you’re with is not OK. I own up to that, and I’ve had to own up to that, and that’s been difficult.”
He said he paid his accuser “because I had to — or at least I thought I did at the time.” He explained that he was newly married, was under consideration for a role in the first Trump administration and wanted to protect his family and his Fox News job.
He also responded to reporting by NBC News that cited current and former Fox News employees who said that “on more than a dozen occasions” while Hegseth was a “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, “they smelled alcohol on him before he went to air,” and appeared on TV “after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.” The report said “[t]hree current employees said his drinking remained a concern up until Trump announced him as his choice to run the Pentagon, at which point Hegseth left Fox.”
But in the op-ed, Hegseth did not directly address allegations about his alcohol consumption. “I’ve been at Fox News—where I saw my work as a continuation of my mission to fight for America. Again, the legacy press has used anonymous sources to try to discredit even that,” and he referred readers to his X feed for statements of support from professional colleagues. He did tell Kelly, “I’ve never had a drinking problem.”
North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer is scheduled to meet with Hegseth Wednesday afternoon and told reporters earlier in the day, “The allegations are very, very serious. They can’t be trivialized. And I just want to know that, that he’s redeemed, and going forward, he’s going to be better.”
Cramer also added, “I think the mood of the conference is one of the pretty serious, really, really serious about it, and serious about how these things affect his ability to do the job, the ability of the troops to look up to him.”
He suggested the Republican conference was watching for signals from the Trump transition team about Hegseth.
“There’s the mood of the conference, and then there’s the mood of the Trump transition team itself,” he said. “So we’ll see what kind of messages and signals we hear throughout the course of the day. As you can tell, these things have been breaking pretty fast and furious.”
Cramer said of Ernst that she would be “easy to confirm, and I think she’d be great,” and in fact, “if she wanted it, she’d be my first pick.”
“I have never backed down from a fight and won’t back down from this one,” Hegseth wrote, adding, “I look forward to an honest confirmation hearing with our distinguished senators—not a show trial in the press.”
Hegseth has continued to meet with the Republican senators who will weigh in on his nomination. But one prominent Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley, told reporters Wednesday afternoon that Hegseth canceled their upcoming meeting.
“I was supposed to sit down with him tomorrow, but they canceled that meeting,” Hawley said.
“I don’t know where things stand at the moment,” he said of Hegseth’s expected nomination and added, “It’s not 100% clear to me who [Trump] wants as secretary of defense right now.”
Hegseth told Kelly he planned to keep meeting with senators to earn their support, but he acknowledged that there’s a possibility he may not be confirmed. “That’s the president’s call,” he said when asked whether he would withdraw from the process.
Jim Defede, Cristina Corujo contributed to this report.
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Nikole Killion and
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