Since Amy National Guard veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was tapped by Donald Trump to be the next secretary of defense, a flurry of anonymous allegations have been made against.
There was the rape accusation from 2017 from an unnamed woman who he met at a Republican Women’s conference in Monterey, California, that resulted in no charges being brought against him (you can see Hegseth’s response to that here). And then there are the claims about excessive drinking and financial mismanagement from his time as the head of veterans organizations.
While Hegseth had remained quiet on the allegations, he joined Megyn for an exclusive interview on Wednesday’s show to respond to what has been reported about him.
The Claims
As with all of the allegations made against Hegseth since his nomination, anonymous sources have gone to corporate media outlets with claims of excessive drinking and financial mismanagement. Reporter Jane Mayer published an article in The New Yorker on Monday titled “Pete Hegseth’s Secret History,” which takes a look at his time running two different veterans organizations – Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.
He was forced to step down, she reported, because of allegedly being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organizations’ events. One event in February 2015 involved Hegseth and employees of Concerned Veterans for America employees at a Louisiana strip club. According to a memo filled out by some employees and sent to senior management, he had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage.
Hegseth denies he was even at the event. “I was at my brother’s house last night where I was talking about, where did this allegation come from of me being in a strip club,” he told Megyn. “And they said… there was an incident at a strip club. Something happened that was addressed. You were nowhere near there. You weren’t even at the event… So, if they’re making up an instance of something where I didn’t even attend, how can you believe a single other thing that any of these people are saying in any instance?”
In another alleged incident, Hegseth went to an event in October 2014 and was reportedly so inebriated by 1am that the staffer who had driven him to his hotel had to asked for assistance to get him to his room.
Again, Hegseth denied the account. “[I was] with a bunch of vets who are working hard, have come back from combat deployments. Would they have beers? Sure, I’m not going to dissuade you of that,” he continued. “The idea that I was constantly being carried up anywhere is patently false.”
Additionally, a NBC New report published Tuesday cited 10 unnamed current and former Fox employees who said Hegseth “drank in ways that concerned his colleagues.” Hegseth clapped back at that accusation as well. “I tell everybody out there, check the tape,” he said. “Find the drunken [tape].”
“And by the way… I got a text from my senior producer at Fox & Friends Weekend recently who said, ‘Pete, you were, by far, always the most reliable member of our team. You were there every morning on time, ready to go, never missed a beat,'” he continued. “Ask the primetime hosts whose shows I do at seven, eight, nine, 10 o’clock… It is patently false and patently ridiculous.”
As it relates to the claims in The New Yorker piece that he left the veterans organizations he worked with in financial disarray and resigned under pressure due, in part, to the mismanagement, Hegseth stood by his work.
“I will only say that I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished at Concerned Veterans for America. I actually would argue that there is not a single vet’s group in the country that accomplished more in a smaller amount of time than we did,” he said. “I was not fired. I was not pushed out. There were no allegations of impropriety. There were no allegations of excessive drinking.
‘I’ve Never Had a Drinking Problem’
While no one has made these claims on the record, Megyn said they could be used against him in the confirmation process. “What do you make of the drinking,” she asked. “Because this… could potentially come back to haunt you with these senators… because – even if you are not an alcoholic, which I believe – you can’t have somebody who is inebriated to the point where they need to be carried in from their hotel room, as alleged anonymously in these New Yorker reports running the Pentagon. Like, you know that.”
Hegseth said he does not abuse alcohol and never has. “First of all, I’ve never had a drinking problem,” he said. “No one has ever approached me and said, ‘Oh, you should really look at getting help…’ Never. I’ve never sought counseling, never sought help. I respect and appreciate people who do.”
But he did acknowledge that he drinks. “What do guys do when they come back from war oftentimes? You know, how do you deal with the demons,” he asked. “Sometimes it is with a bottle. Unfortunately, tragically, for too many guys, it is with the bottle, and then it is depression, and, even worse, suicide. We’ve got an epidemic of that in our country.”
In his case, he believes it was his faith and his marriage that saved his life. “By the grace of God, I found my chapters of purpose that pulled me out of that,” Hegseth shared. “In many ways, I found two things, my two Js… My wife, Jennifer, changed my life, saved me. There is just no doubt about it. And my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And without those two Js, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
His Next ‘Deployment’
Hegseth reiterated that those bringing the allegations are not revealing themselves, and he speculated why that might be so. “All of those allegations are anonymous. All of them are unsubstantiated,” he said. “No one is putting their name on it. No one can point to an actual incidents, an actual place, an actual piece of evidence. None of it.”
He chalked it up to “the anatomy of a smear,” in which his detractors are trying to slowly leak damaging information “to extend it out because they want to create a scenario where senators go, ‘Okay, I can handle this. I can handle that. But if he is drinking, I can’t handle that.'” Hegseth called the drinking charges, “by far, the least true aspect of any part of this.”
When Megyn asked Hegseth is he still drinks today, he said he would revert to a lifestyle he learned while serving if confirmed. “When I deployed, we had something called General Order Number One… [which] is you are not allowed to drink while you’re on deployment,” he recalled. “So, if you’re in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a combat zone, you’re not allowed to drink.”
He plans to treat his time at the Pentagon the same way. “That is how I view this role as secretary of defense… I’m not going to have a drink at all,” Hegseth explained. “That is not hard for me because it is not a problem for me. But I need to make sure the senators, and the troops, and President Trump, and everybody else knows when you call me 24/7, you’re getting fully dialed-in Pete – just like you always did in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“This is the biggest deployment of my life,” he added, “and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hegseth by tuning in to episode 957 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.