Peter Brian Hegseth (born June 6, 1980) is an American television presenter, author, and former National Guard officer who has served as the United States secretary of defense since 2025.

Hegseth studied politics at Princeton University, where he published for The Princeton Tory, a conservative student newspaper. In 2003, he was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Minnesota National Guard, where he served at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hegseth worked for several organizations after leaving Iraq, including as an executive director at Vets For Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. He became a contributor for Fox News in 2014. Hegseth served as an advisor to Trump after initally supporting his campaign in 2016. From 2017 to 2024, he was a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend. He has written several books, including American Crusade (2020) and The War on Warriors (2024).

In November 2024, president-elect Donald Trump named Hegseth as his nominee for secretary of defense. A Senate Committee on Armed Services committee hearing for Hegseth was held days before Trump's second inauguration. He faced allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and alcohol issues leading up to his committee confirmation. He was confirmed by the Senate, with vice president JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote, the second time in U.S. history that a Cabinet nominee's confirmation was decided by a vice president after Betsy DeVos in 2017. He is the second youngest person to serve as secretary of defense, after Donald Rumsfeld, and the first Minnesotan to serve in the position.

Peter Brian Hegseth was born on June 6, 1980, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.^[1] He was the first child of Brian and Penelope^[2] "Penny" Hegseth.^[3][a] Brian was a basketball coach for high schools in the Minnesota area before retiring in 2019,^[3] while Penny is an executive business coach^[4] who has taught with the Minnesota Excellence in Public Service Series, a program for Republican women.^[2] Hegseth was raised in Forest Lake, Minnesota,^[5] and attended Forest Lake Area High School.^[6] He graduated in 1999 as valedictorian and was later inducted into the hall of fame. He played for the school's football team and was a point guard, earning school records in career and single-season three-point throws and single-season three-point shooting percentage. Hegseth was twice named all-conference and earned all-state honors as a senior.^[7]

Hegseth studied at Princeton University, where he majored in politics. According to Reserve & National Guard Magazine, he chose Princeton over the United States Military Academy for Princeton's men's basketball program, the Tigers.^[8] Months before the September 11 attacks, Hegseth joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.^[9] He played for the Tigers^[7] and was the publisher and later editor-in-chief of The Princeton Tory, a conservative newspaper.^[10] In April 2002, he declared that as publisher, he would "defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity." The editors of The Princeton Tory criticized Halle Berry for accepting the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball (2001) "on behalf of an entire race," and The New York Times for announcing that it would print gay marriage announcements, arguing that it would justify publishing marriage announcements for incestuous, zoophilic, and pedophilic relationships.^[11] In October, the Tory published an editorial characterizing homosexuality as immoral. In response, the president of Princeton's student government, Nina Langsam, wrote a strongly-worded email to The Princeton Tory's publisher, Brad Simmons, and Hegseth. Her email was published in the following issue.^[12]

After graduating from Princeton in June 2003, Hegseth commissioned as a second lieutenant^[5] in the United States Army through the university's Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.^[13] He briefly worked as an equity-markets analyst at Bear Sterns.^[10] Hegseth completed his basic training at Fort Moore in Columbus, Georgia in 2004,^[8] and for eleven months, he was a Minnesota National Guardsman at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.^[13] There, he led a platoon of soldiers from the New Jersey National Guard^[9] guarding imprisoned terrorists.^[10] By July 2005, he had returned to Bear Sterns;^[13] shortly thereafter, he volunteered in the Iraq War as an infantry officer,^[8] where he received a Bronze Star Medal.^[10] Hegseth served in the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment^[9] in the 101st Airborne Division, led by colonel Michael D. Steele.^[14] He began his tour in Baghdad before moving to Samarra,^[5] he served as a civil affairs officer,^[15] working with the city council and forming an alliance with councilmember Asaad Ali Yaseen.^[5] Hegseth has described a near-death experience in Iraq in which a rocket-propelled grenade hit his vehicle, but failed to detonate.^[16]

In 2011, Hegseth enlisted in the Minnesota National Guard as a captain.^[5] He volunteered to teach at the Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan, for eight months,^[5] during the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan;^[14] he taught one of the final classes at the school.^[9] After completing his tour in 2014, he was promoted to major^[10] and enlisted in the Individual Ready Reserve.^[8] Through the reserve, he joined the District of Columbia Army National Guard in June 2019 as a traditional drilling service member, remaining in duty until March 2021.^[17] He was barred him from serving on duty at the inauguration of Joe Biden after a guardsman flagged Hegseth as an "insider threat", noting a tattoo on his bicep of the words Deus vult.^[18] He left the Individual Ready Reserve in January 2024, resigning over the incident.^[19]

By August 2006,^[9] Hegseth moved to Manhattan and began working at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research,^[5] where he met a Marine who was working for Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy organization.^[10] He began working for Vets for Freedom in 2006 as an unpaid director;^[20] by 2007, he was working full-time as an executive director,^[21] and by the following year, he became the organization's president.^[20] In May 2007, Hegseth appeared at a presidential campaign fundraiser for Arizona senator John McCain.^[22] In the months leading up to the 2008 United States presidential election, Vets for Freedom began supporting McCain.^[23] As the group's chairman, he criticized Illinois senator Barack Obama for supporting "a dangerous policy of irreversible withdrawal."^[24] By January 2009, Vets for Freedom had accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, leading to an internal campaign to oust Hegseth. The group merged with Military Families United, and he was removed from leadership by 2011.^[10]

After returning to Minnesota in February 2012,^[5] Hegseth had decided to enter the Republican primary for the United States Senate election in Minnesota and had selected a campaign manager, Anne Neu Brindley.^[25] By April, his campaign had raised US$160,000.^[26] Hegseth was defeated by Kurt Bills in the Republican convention in May,^[27] and he withdrew his nomination days later.^[28] He founded MN PAC to support similar candidates, though a third of the organization's funds were given to his friends and family.^[10] Hegseth began working for Concerned Veterans of America, a group funded by the Koch brothers,^[29] that year.^[30] He enrolled in the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, but only completed one semester;^[5] he graduated four years later with a degree in public policy.^[7] In 2022,^[31] to protest the offering of classes in critical race theory at Harvard University, he wrote "Return to sender" on his degree^[32] and reportedly sent it back to the university.^[33]

Hegseth left Concerned Veterans for America in January 2016^[34] after issues his mismanagement and alcoholism.^[10] In December, president-elect Donald Trump considered Hegseth for secretary of veterans affairs, but he faced opposition from veterans groups who viewed Hegseth's support for allowing all veterans to choose private doctors as untenable; Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that selecting Hegseth would "be war" and "a radical departure" for the department.^[34] Trump later chose David Shulkin, with The Washington Post noting Hegseth's lack of experience in operating a large organization.^[35] Hegseth told podcaster Shawn Ryan that Trump found him too young to assume the position.^[36] After Shulkin fell out of favor with the Trump administration in March 2018, Hegseth positioned himself as a potential candidate,^[37] though Trump later selected Robert Wilkie after consulting Hegseth and financier Isaac Perlmutter.^[38]

By June 2014, Hegseth had become a regular contributor to Fox News^[39] by the network's executive, Roger Ailes.^[40] In 2016, he was briefly a host on TheBlaze^[41] before regularly hosting Fox & Friends Weekend that year after Ailes's resignation, becoming an official co-host in January 2017.^[40] According to a Fox News executive in Hoax (2020), Jennifer Rauchet, a producer of Fox & Friends Weekend who would later marry him, "was favoring Pete with airtime" and "kept putting Pete on TV."^[42] Hegseth served as a temporary host for Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle (2017–present) in an effort by the network to promote other staffers; the change occurred during the boycott of The Ingraham Angle following comments Ingraham had made about David Hogg, an activist and survivor of the Parkland high school shooting.^[43] He hosted All-American New Year (2018) with Kennedy.^[44]

Hegseth's opinions expressed on Fox & Friends influenced Trump's policymaking in his first term. In October 2018, as a migrant caravan began traveling to the United States, Trump claimed that "unknown Middle Easterners" had infiltrated the caravan. Trump apparently cited a comment that Hegseth had made on Fox & Friends, though Hegseth noted that he had not verified his statement for accuracy.^[45] Hegseth himself apparently had based his claim on a statement Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales had made on capturing one hundred ISIS fighters in the country.^[46] In negotiations to avert a federal government shutdown, Democrats neared a deal until Hegseth urged Trump not to support a deal that did not include US$5 billion for his border wall.^[47] Trump repeated claims that Hegseth had made correlating video games with mass shootings after two mass shootings in El Paso and in Dayton in August 2019.^[48] Hegseth claimed that he had spoken to Trump on pardoning war criminals Clint Lorance and Mathew L. Golsteyn, as well as reversing the demotion of Eddie Gallagher.^[49]

At Fox News, Hegseth was the subject of multiple lawsuits. In June 2015, he threw an axe during a Flag Day event in New York City, accidentally hitting a drummer from the United States Military Academy. Video of the incident was widely circulated online. The drummer, Jeff Prosperie, alleged that he had suffered "severe and serious personal injuries to his mind and body" and "permanent effects of pain, disability, disfigurement and loss of body function." Prosperie filed a lawsuit against Hegseth three years later.^[50] In Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network (2023), Dominion Voting Systems included a segment of Fox & Friends Weekend featuring Hegseth with co-hosts Will Cain and Rachel Campos-Duffy, in which they failed to reject claims by Rudy Giuliani of election fraud being facilitated by the company's voting machines.^[51]

Hegseth was chosen among Fox News's hosts to be featured on Fox Nation, the network's streaming service.^[52] To promote the service, he co-hosted a one-hour special, Fox Nation First Look, with Jesse Watters, Tomi Lahren, Britt McHenry, and Tyrus.^[53] On Fox Nation, Hegseth hosted The Miseducation of America (2022–2023), a television program criticizing "the Left's educational agenda".^[54] He also hosted the series Battle in the Holy Land (2019–2023)^[55] and The Life of Jesus (2022–2023), and the special Battle in Bethlehem (2019), on the service.^[13]

On November 12, 2024, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump named Hegseth as his nominee for secretary of defense,^[56] after Arkansas senator Tom Cotton announced he wouuld not serve as secretary.^[57] He subsequently ended his contract with Fox News.^[31] The selection of Hegseth was seen as a sign that Trump sought to appoint a loyalist to lead the Department of Defense,^[b] and his relative lack of experience surprised officials within the department.^[c] According to Vanity Fair, Trump's transition team became aware of a sexual assault allegation involving Hegseth that occurred in Monterey, California, seven years prior the following day;^[64] The Washington Post reported that senior officials on the team were surprised by the allegation and reconsidered his nomination.^[65] Despite the allegation, Trump defended Hegseth^[66] and several Republican senators indicated that they would support him.^[67] His nomination was threatened by an article from Jane Mayer in The New Yorker detailing alleged financial mismanagement and alcohol issues while leading his veterans' groups,^[10] while an NBC News article reported that his drinking habits concerned his colleagues at Fox News;^[68] The New York Times reported in December that Trump had begun to consider Florida governor Ron DeSantis as an alternative.^[69]

In an effort to retain his nomination amid controversies, Hegseth began a campaign that month. Advisors to Trump privately sought to assuade him to support Hegseth in fear that it would embolden recalcitrant Republican senators, while he could not garner support for DeSantis, according to The New York Times. In addition, the Times reported that vice president-elect JD Vance had led a group of Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr., former Trump aide Steve Bannon, political activist Charlie Kirk, and Breitbart News reporter Matt Boyle.^[70] Trump allies took a direct approach to addressing the controversies, including an interview with Megyn Kelly that impressed Trump.^[71] Hegseth appeared at the United States Capitol;^[72] Trump publicly reaffirmed his support for Hegseth afterwards.^[73] The visit gave Iowa senator Joni Ernst, who had threatened his nomination, a positive impression of Hegseth.^[74]

Hegseth appeared before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on January 14. He positioned himself as a "warrior" while denying the allegations and his previous claims that women should not serve in combat roles. Hegseth was criticized by Democrats over his allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and alcohol issues.^[75] Rhode Island senator Jack Reed, the committee's ranking member, noted that Hegseth had used the term "jagoff" to derogatorily refer to a Judge Advocate General officer who reprimanded him on the use of rocket-propelled grenades in his book The War on Warriors (2024).^[76] He did not answer a question from Virginia senator Tim Kaine on whether or not sexual assault, drinking, or infidelity were disqualifying.^[77] The Committee on Armed Services voted to advance his nomination 14–13 along party lines on January 20, after Trump was inaugurated.^[78] Hegseth's former sister-in-law, Danielle, sent an affidavit to senators alleging that he was abusive to his second wife, Samantha.^[79]

On January 24, Hegseth was confirmed by the Senate in a 51–50 vote. Every Republican senator, with the exception of Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell, voted to confirm him, while every Democrat senator opposed his nomination, leading to a 50–50 vote. Vance cast a tie-breaking vote to confirm Hegseth.^[80] His confirmation was threatened by senator Thom Tillis, who told Senate majority leader John Thune the day before that he would not vote for Hegseth on the basis of his sexual assault allegations. Assuaded by Vance,^[81] Tillis expressed support for Hegseth on X minutes before the vote.^[82] His confirmation was the second in U.S. history to be decided by a vice president, after Betsy DeVos's confirmation for secretary of education in 2017; Trump had nominated DeVos, and her confirmation was opposed by Collins and Murkowski but decided by vice president Mike Pence.^[83] He was sworn in by Vance the following day.^[84]

In a speech following his swearing-in, Hegseth stated several priorities for the Department of Defense, including to "revive the warrior ethos", restore trust in the military, redevelop the United States's industrial base, ease the department's process to purchase weaponry, defend the U.S. domestically, engage with Indo-Pacific to deter China, and support Trump's effort to "end wars responsibly"—including the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Middle Eastern crisis.^[85]

After being sworn in, Hegseth revoked the security clearance and detail of Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and chief of staff of the Army who later became a critic of Trump, and ordered an inspector general inquiry into Milley's tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the inspector general of the Department of Defense, Robert Storch, was removed from his position after Trump dismissed several inspectors general.^[86] According to The Washington Post, the Department of Defense Education Activity began removing certain books on immigration and sexuality.^[87] He visited the Mexico–United States border with Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, in El Paso, Texas, in February, where he stated that the federal government intended to gain complete "operational control of the southern border".^[88] He renamed Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg, its previous name honoring the Confederate general Braxton Bragg. The military base was instead named for Roland L. Bragg, a soldier who served in World War II.^[89]

In a call to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day after being sworn in, Hegseth said that the United States was "fully committed" to the security of Israel.^[90]

In an interview with the National Review in March 2012, Hegseth advocated for premium support in Medicare and removing fee-for-service. He opposed a contraception mandate and described the Keystone Pipeline as a dichotomy between "jobs and an environmental-impact study", and that he was "always going to side with jobs."^[5] On Fox & Friends in 2019, he described climate change as an attempt at government control.^[91]

Hegseth initially supported Florida senator Marco Rubio in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, but later began to favor Texas senator Ted Cruz and finally Donald Trump.^[92] He defended Trump's policies in his first term, including his interactions with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the 2020–2021 U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the assassination of Qasem Soleimani.^[14]

In November 2009, Hegseth supported sending additional forces into Afghanistan during the War in Afghanistan.^[93] He advocated for withdrawing from Afghanistan in his interview with the National Review, but argued that special operators should remain in the country and that the Afghan Army should be supported to avert a conflict.^[5]

Hegseth has supported the premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu. After Netanyahu was expected to be criminally charged in March 2019 for alleged bribery and fraud, he posted a video of Hegseth describing him as a "great friend to the United States".^[94] He has argued that the Chinese government is "building a military to defeat the United States" and repeated claims by Trump that "tens of thousands of Chinese nationals" have been sent to the Mexico–United States border.^[95]

In a Yale Political Union speech in October 2008, Hegseth disagreed with "Don't ask, don't tell", the United States's position on homosexuality in the military, but noted that "Radical Islam is a far greater threat."^[96] In a podcast interview with Shawn Ryan in November 2024, Hegseth stated that women should not serve in combat roles.^[97]

Hegseth opposed Operation Iron Triangle, a raid in August 2006 that resulted in the death of three Iraqi men, as "atrocities" to an audience at the University of Virginia. He has criticized the U.S. military for accusing soldiers of committing war crimes.^[9]

Hegseth published his memoir, In the Arena, in 2016.^[13] In May 2020, he released American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free.^[98] In October, Fox News Media reached a three-book agreement with HarperCollins to publish books by Fox News hosts, beginning with Hegseth's Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes in November.^[99] He co-authored Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation with David Goodwin, the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, in 2022.^[100] In June 2024, Hegseth published The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.^[101] American Crusade, Modern Warriors, Battle for the American Mind, and The War on Warriors have reached The New York Times Best Seller list.^[7] He wrote the foreword to The Case against the Establishment (2017), a book written by Nick Adams and Dave Erickson.^[102]

In 2004, Hegseth married Meredith Schwarz, a graduate of Forest Lake Area High School, at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Minnesota; they were voted "most likely to marry" by their graduating class. Meredith filed for divorce in December 2008 after Hegseth admitted to five affairs; he had been dating Samantha Deering, whom he had met at Vets for Freedom. Deering married Hegseth in 2010, with whom he has three children, though they filed for divorce in 2017.^[103][4] In 2019, Hegseth married Jennifer Rauchet, a producer on Fox & Friends, at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey, in an event attended by the Trump family.^[104]

In October 2017, a female staffer for the California Federation of Republican Women told police in Monterey, California, that Hegseth had sexually assaulted her in a hotel room after an organization event.^[105] The woman told police that she was with Hegseth at the hotel bar, where "things got fuzzy" and, she said, a drug may have been slipped into her drink.^{[106][107][108]} She told police she remembered "being in an unknown room with Hegseth",^[108] who took away her phone and blocked her efforts to leave.^[109] She told police she "remembered saying 'no' a lot"^{[109][110][111]} and that Hegseth had sex with her.^[112] She told police that she did not recall the incident for several days, after which she went to the emergency room for a rape kit test,^[112] whereupon the police started an investigation.^{[106][108][113]} Hegseth told police that he did have sex with the woman but that it was consensual.^[113][114]

The police referred the matter to Monterey County district attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni, who declined to press charges, saying, "No charges were supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt".^[106][113] A civil lawsuit was threatened, and in 2020, Hegseth paid the woman $50,000 as part of a non-disclosure agreement.^{[114][115][116]} In November 2024, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, later said his client "felt that he was the victim of blackmail and innocent collateral damage" and paid only because he feared for his career.^[117]

The allegations, police report, and non-disclosure agreement came to public notice in November 2024, after Trump announced his intention to nominate Hegseth as U.S. defense secretary.^{[105][108][118]} The amount of the payment was revealed in January 2025.^[116]

In In the Arena (2016), Hegseth described his Christian faith as initially "more out of diligent habit than deep conviction". Following the September 11 attacks, he developed a hatred for Islamic terrorism, denouncing the Princeton University Chapel for its "moral relativism".^[13] He told Nashville Christian Family that he experienced a religious transformation in 2018 after he and his wife, Jennifer, began attending the Colts Neck Community Church in New Jersey. Seeking to send their children to Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy, a Christian school, the Hegseths moved to Nashville, Tennessee, three years later. There, they joined the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a church in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. In December 2024, The New York Times wrote that Hegseth was a self-avowed Christian nationalist.^[98]

Hegseth has several tattoos, including one across his right bicep reading Deus vult, a Christian phrase associated with divine providence and God's will,^[119] as well as a tattoo of the Jerusalem cross on his right breast. In addition, he has a tattoo of the political cartoon Join, or Die, a cross cum sword with Hebrew lettering reading Yeshua, and the words We the People on his right forearm, as well as the coat of arms of the 187th Infantry Regiment on his back, including its motto Ne Desit Virtus or "Let Valor Not Fail".^[120]

Hegseth's awards and decorations include:^[121][122]

In addition, Hegseth was awarded the Expert Infantryman Badge, though it cannot be worn with the Combat Infantryman Badge.^[122]

• Hegseth at The Princeton Tory
• Appearances on C-SPAN