Pete Hegseth interviews Donald Trump in 2017. Image via Andrew Harnik/AP.
Weekend Fox News host Pete Hegseth has already been an exceedingly controversial choice as Donald Trump’s pick for his Secretary of Defense. Hegseth and the Trump camp have spent recent days pushing back against two simultaneous controversies: allegations that Hegseth has “extremist” tattoos, as some critics have charged, and news broken by Vanity Fair on Thursday that Hegseth was previously investigated by police in California over a sexual misconduct claim. Hegseth has denied the allegations and no charges were ever filed against him.
Hegseth is a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lately, media scrutiny has focused on his tattoos, one of which depicts a Jerusalem cross, a Christian symbol first popularized during the Crusades, and one that reads “Deus Vult” (“God wills it” in Latin), which refers to divine providence. A slogan for Catholics during the First Crusade, this phrase has more recently been chanted by white supremacists and co-opted by the far right.
Hegseth confirmed in a November interview with a podcaster that he was one of 12 National Guard members removed from working at Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting by the FBI and U.S. military, adding: “I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C., and my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration.” A fellow National Guardsmen, DeRicko Gaither, confirmed to CBS that he’d reported Hegseth as being a possible “insider threat” due to the Deus Vult tattoo.
The other controversy is fresh: journalist Gabriel Sherman reported on Thursday that Hegseth was investigated by Monterey Park police in 2017 over an allegation of sexual misconduct. He was not arrested or charged with a crime.
Rather than denying that the investigation took place, Trump campaign spokesperson (and future Trump administration communications director) Steven Cheung told Sherman in a statement that Hegseth “has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”
On X, Hegseth has retweeted posts expressing support for him, including one that reads, “The fact Pete was banned from duty for expressing his Christian beliefs is exactly why he needs to be SECDEF.” Vice presidential nominee JD Vance called the Associated Press’ coverage of the controversy “disgusting anti-Christian bigotry,” writing, “They’re attacking Pete Hegseth for having a Christian motto tattooed on his arm.”
Hegseth agreed, reposting the tweet and adding, “Amen @JDVance. Anti-Christian bigotry in the media on full display. They can target me—I don’t give a damn—but this type of targeting of Christians, conservatives, patriots and everyday Americans will stop on DAY ONE at DJT’s DoD.”
Hegseth hasn’t responded publicly to Vanity Fair’s story about the sexual misconduct investigation; Sherman reported that Trump’s lawyers and Susie Wiles, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, both spoke to him about it on Thursday.
In his time on Fox News, Hegseth has devoted air time to railing against “woke” policies he claims are harming military readiness, also the subject of a book he published in June titled The War on Warriors. Hegseth said in a podcast appearance with Ben Shapiro that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles, adding that “men in those positions are more capable.” (He also went mildly viral in 2019 for saying on Fox and Friends that he “hasn’t washed [his] hands for ten years,” joking—at least we think—that “germs are not a real thing, I can’t see them.”)
Hegseth also has deep connections with the so-called TheoBros, a collection of ultra-conservative and extremely online millennial Christian men who follow an Idaho pastor named Douglas Wilson. Some of Wilson’s followers believe that the United States should, as Mother Jones’ Kiera Butler has written, “be subject to Biblical law.”
