Pete Hegseth is an unconventional nominee for secretary of defense and could be a much-need change agent in a woefully woke and bloated Defense Department.

Hegseth is a Princeton and Harvard grad, a former National Guard infantry officer who volunteered for duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving two Bronze Stars, and the best-selling author of The War on the Warriors. As such, I think he’s earned a serious hearing.

Instead, what he’s getting is pushback from Senate Republicans and anonymously sourced Leftmedia hit pieces about his apparently hard-drinking, hard-partying past. The New York Times attack on Hegseth is based on a leaked 2018 email from his mom, sent amid an ugly divorce, which was harshly worded and hastily written — and retracted in a subsequent email two hours later.

Here’s Hegseth’s mom on Fox News yesterday, imploring the senators to give her son a hearing and to realize that he’s a thoroughly changed man from the 2018 version that prompted her email. “He’s got a big heart, he’s very smart. He’s the most faithful patriot of this country,” she said. “He has fought and almost died for his country. He’s a good dad, he’s an amazing son and father — that’s the Pete I want people to know.”

Pete Hegseth’s mother: “He’s got a big heart, he’s very smart. He’s the most faithful patriot of this country… he has fought and almost died for his country. He’s a good dad, he’s an amazing son and father- that’s the Pete I want people to know.” pic.twitter.com/hCq3JOvzv1

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 4, 2024

The New Yorker pilled on with its own hit piece, which was aptly rebutted by the New York Post, rejecting the “sweeping allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual impropriety … during his time leading a veterans advocacy group — which included a booze-fueled trip to a strip club with co-workers.”

But guess which piece is getting all the attention on Capitol Hill? That’s right, the anonymously sourced New Yorker hit job.

Sean Parnell, a former senior adviser to Hegseth at Concerned Veterans for America, said Tuesday that “lurid details shared anonymously in a New Yorker article were utterly false and ‘not reflective’ of the Army vet he came to know as the organization’s president.” Parnell continued:

If you read that article, I mean, I think you come away thinking that CVA was some sort of slush fund for parties or something — and nothing could be further from the truth. There were no strip clubs involved that I can recall. Sometimes, the staff — after the events were over — we would go out and have a drink. But it was never some crazy, insane thing like that article.

Early last week, we noted that Trump probably wasn’t too pleased that Hegseth didn’t reveal up front the details of a 2017 police report from Monterey, California, in which police investigated a woman’s accusation against Hegseth of sexual assault, though one would think the Trump team would have already been aware of this had Hegseth been properly vetted. That accusation is likely not true, as the details of the police report reveal. It still wasn’t a good look for Hegseth, but this is from a period in his life that, by all accounts, is well behind him.

“I am not going to make any decision based on an anonymous source,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who served with Hegseth in Afghanistan — a theater in which none of Hegseth’s anonymous critics seem to have served. “If you’re not willing to raise your right hand and say it, it doesn’t count,” Graham added. “Allegations that are anonymous don’t count.”

Dutifully supporting Trump’s nominee, Vice President-elect and fellow warrior JD Vance said, “I think Pete Hegseth deserves a fair hearing by the Senate not a sham hearing from the American media.”

Hegseth’s SecDef nomination and the controversy swirling around it is now the story in Washington. As is the Wall Street Journal piece from Tuesday night, which floats the idea of Trump replacing Hegseth as defense secretary with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Like Hegseth, I think DeSantis would make a great reform-minded defense secretary. But moving him to the Pentagon would take him off the field in Florida, where he’s distinguished himself as our nation’s best governor.

On Tuesday, as Fox News reports, Trump and DeSantis met face-to-face to talk about the job of defense secretary. It’s a fascinating prospect on multiple levels, and it would be a bold move, to be sure. And if anyone could clean that massive DOD house and get rid of its woke bureaucracy, it’d be the no-nonsense Florida governor, who has two years left in his second term.

DeSantis would reportedly accept the job if Trump offers it, in which case we’d guess his lieutenant governor, Jeanette Nunez, would replace him and thereby become the state’s first female and first Hispanic governor. In any case, if the Journal is floating this DeSantis trial balloon, it means that sources within the Trump campaign wanted it so.

On the other hand, Trump pulling the Hegseth nomination would give the Left another scalp of a potential deep state reformer, Trump’s first attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, having been the first.

Is Hegseth being Kavanaugh’d? That’s the comparison he made yesterday with SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly, and there certainly seem to be some parallels.

Hegseth’s friends at Fox News — the ones who’ve gotten to know him best over the past seven years — are fighting hard for him. Take his cohost, Rachel Campos-Duffy:

You should be ashamed of yourself for posting these lies! Why don’t you ask me? I’ve had a front seat to [his] life & maturation. I’ve seen him turn his life around spiritually & as a father & husband over the last 7 yrs. His life today revolves 100% around his family & his TN farm. Anyone who works for Fox & Friends weekends knows it is a family friendly environment. … On Sundays, he bolts out of the studio so he can catch a plane and attend church w/ his family. He is a man of deep faith who proudly clings to his Bible because he has the humility to know he needs it. I know all of this because he is one of my very best friends. You will not meet a kinder more generous person. He is an intentional dad & husband, always striving to be better and present. He is also wicked smart. I don’t just like Pete, I ADMIRE him because he has worked so hard to become the man he is today. He will end the woke BS in our military, put the warriors first and tell the warmongers to pound sand. America needs Pete. Trump needs Pete. Don’t let the deep state military industrial complex pick our next Secretary of Defense. Stand with Pete! Call your Senators.

Hegseth fought back yesterday on Capitol Hill and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed whose subhead read, “I look forward to an honest confirmation hearing, not a press show trial based on anonymous accusations.” He adds:

I’ve been through a lot: combat tours, job changes, divorces and family challenges. (Yes, I love my mom very much, and she loves me.) I have always led with honesty, integrity and passion. Tragically, many veterans never find the purpose for their next chapter and succumb to the bottle, depression or, worst of all, suicide. I understand what they are facing — because I’ve lived it. But by the grace of God, I took another path. My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has renewed and restored my life. I am saved by his grace.

Ask yourself: Does this sound like the kind of man who would put our warriors first?

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers,” Hegseth posted to X yesterday. “The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of Donald Trump — and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources and BS stories. They don’t want truth. Our warriors never back down, and neither will I.”

Here’s hoping Donald Trump trusts his first, best instinct.