Hegseth Biography
Pete Hegseth is an American television presenter, author, and former Army National Guard officer currently as Donald Trump’s second cabinet secretary of defense contender.
Hegseth Age
Hegseth is 44 years old as of 6 June 2024. He was born on 6 June 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.
Hegseth Wife and Children
Pete has been married thrice. Meredith Schwarz, Hegseth’s high school girlfriend from Minnesota, was his first wife, whom he married in 2004. The two parted ways in 2009 after he confessed to several infidelity charges. He wed Samantha Deering, his second wife, in 2010; the two of them had three boys.
Hegseth and Fox executive producer Jennifer Rauchet welcomed a daughter, Gwen, in August 2017 while Hegseth was still married to Samantha. Samantha filed for divorce in September 2017, and it took ten months for the divorce to be finalized. On August 16, 2019, Gwen’s second birthday, Hegseth and Rauchet, who has three small children from her former marriage, were married.
Hegseth Family
Hegseth is the son of Penelope Hegseth and basketball coach Brian and Penny Hegseth. He has Norwegian ancestry on both sides of the family and grew up in the neighboring Forest Lake. He played basketball and football while attending Forest Lake Area High School, where he graduated as his class’ valedictorian in 1999.
Hegseth Religion
He belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and is a member of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship.
Was Pete Hegseth a Navy SEAL
Hegseth has stated his desire to dismiss Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Charles Q. Brown Jr. According to Hegseth, “any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI, woke shit has got to go.”
He also wants to rid the military of “woke” generals and DEI programs. “Our diversity is our strength” is the US military’s catchphrase, which Hegseth calls the “dumbest phrase on planet Earth.” “Rooting out ‘extremism,’ today’s generals push rank-and-file patriots out of their formations,” he wrote in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, criticizing attempts to combat extremism inside the US military.
Hegseth argued in The War on Warriors that the Geneva Conventions provide the other side an unfair edge and urged the US to disregard them. “The enemy is aware that we are only fighting with one hand behind our back,” he writes. Aren’t we better off winning our battles by our own terms if our soldiers are required to give up more lives and obey laws that are arbitrary only to make international courts feel better about themselves?
Hegseth Career at Fox News
In 2014, Hegseth began contributing to Fox News. A pre-recorded phone interview between Hegseth and Trump was aired during his co-hosting of Fox News Channel’s All-American New Year with Fox Business Network’s Kennedy in December 2018. Since 2021, he has frequently appeared as a guest on Unfiltered with Dan Bongino.
During a Flag Day live segment on June 14, 2015, Hegseth unintentionally struck a West Point drummer while he was tossing an axe. The axe struck one of the individuals behind it after Hegseth missed the aim. The accident’s video quickly gained popularity online. The drummer sued Fox and Hegseth in 2018, claiming that their negligence had caused him to sustain “severe and serious personal injuries to his mind and body,” as well as “permanent effects of pain, disability, disfigurement and loss of body function.”
Even though The New York Times had already posted a piece on the detention of five ISIS officials, Hegseth called the publication the “failing New York Times” in May 2018 for allegedly neglecting to cover the incident.
Hegseth Career
Hegseth, a former member of the National Guard, was taken out of the security team for Joe Biden’s 2020 inauguration. Later, in January 2024, he was kicked out of the IRR because of his tattoo of the Jerusalem cross, which was deemed to be associated with radicalism. Hegseth advocated for increased troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan while serving as executive director of Vets For Freedom after a brief stint at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. However, the organization’s size was lowered since it was unable to pay its creditors. In 2012, Hegseth was relegated from president and executive director to the position of officer, earning $5,000 annually.
In 2012, Hegseth established the MN PAC, a political action committee that was discovered to have spent a third of its $15,000 in funding on Christmas parties for friends and family. From 2013 until 2016, he served as the executive director of Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy organization supported by the Koch brothers. The group aimed to engage veterans in conservative political causes and promoted increased privatization of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In the first Trump administration, Hegseth was a candidate to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, but in 2017, he was passed up in favor of David Shulkin. Prior to the Republican primary election, Hegseth dropped his 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota. The Princeton Tory, a conservative student newspaper at Princeton University, has been published and contributed to by Hegseth.
