Penelope Hegseth, the mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s embattled pick to run the Pentagon, appeared on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning to defend her son following the leak of a damning 2018 email in which she called him an “abuser of women.”
Penelope Hegseth made a direct-to-camera appeal in defense of her son, specifically to Trump and “female senators” who’ll be voting on his nomination. Her appearance came as Trump was said to be weighing replacing Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary nominee with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
To Trump, “I want to say thank you for your belief in my son. We all believe in him,” she said on the Fox program that Trump is known to never miss. “I am here to tell the truth, to tell the truth to American people and tell the truth to the senators on the Hill, especially our female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and that you will listen to Pete.”
Assuming that all Democrats vote against Pete Hegseth’s nomination, he can only stand to lose three Republicans. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a combat veteran, and Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis each signaled reservations about Pete Hegseth, who is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017. (He has maintained the encounter was consensual.)
Lummis previously called the allegations against Pete Hegseth “side issues,” but seemed less confident about his prospects as of Monday, the day after a bombshell New Yorker piece detailed his troubled tenure helming two veteran advocacy groups, highlighting allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual impropriety.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Penelope Hegseth didn’t address any of the specific allegations against her son, a former Army National Guard officer and ex-Fox News host, including that his excessive drinking worried his Fox News colleagues.
She appeared on TV to defend her son against an email she wrote him in 2018, as he was embroiled in a difficult 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,” she wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times.
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Penelope Hegseth claimed the publication “threatened” her prior to the email’s publication. “They say, ‘Unless you make a statement, we will publish it as is.’ And I think that’s a despicable way to treat anyone.” She also didn’t remember who she blind copied on the email and didn’t venture a guess at who may have leaked it to the Times.
On Wednesday, she called her son a “new person” who is “redeemed, forgiven, changed.”
But Penelope Hegseth still did not commit to testifying on his behalf at a Senate confirmation hearing. “I don’t have an answer to that right now,” she said. “I haven’t thought about that.”