Penelope Hegseth, the mom of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s embattled choose to run the Pentagon, appeared on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning to defend her son following the leak of a damning 2018 e-mail wherein she known as him an “abuser of women.”
Penelope Hegseth made a direct-to-camera enchantment in protection of her son, particularly to Trump and “female senators” who’ll be voting on his nomination. Her look got here as Trump was mentioned to be weighing changing Pete Hegseth as his protection 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 mentioned on the Fox program that Trump is thought to by no means 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 every one Democrats vote in opposition to Pete Hegseth’s nomination, he can solely stand to lose three Republicans. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a fight veteran, and Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis every signaled reservations about Pete Hegseth, who’s accused of sexually assaulting a lady in 2017. (He has maintained the encounter was consensual.)
Lummis beforehand known as the allegations in opposition to Pete Hegseth “side issues,” however appeared much less assured about his prospects as of Monday, the day after a bombshell New Yorker piece detailed his troubled tenure helming two veteran advocacy teams, highlighting allegations of monetary mismanagement and sexual impropriety.
(AP Picture/J. Scott Applewhite)
Penelope Hegseth didn’t tackle any of the precise allegations in opposition to her son, a former Military Nationwide Guard officer and ex-Fox Information host, together with that his extreme ingesting frightened his Fox Information colleagues.
She appeared on TV to defend her son in opposition to an e-mail she wrote him in 2018, as he was embroiled in a troublesome divorce from his second spouse.
“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 e-mail obtained by The New York Instances.
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Penelope Hegseth claimed the publication “threatened” her previous to the e-mail’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 additionally didn’t keep in mind who she blind copied on the e-mail and didn’t enterprise a guess at who could have leaked it to the Instances.
On Wednesday, she known as her son a “new person” who’s “redeemed, forgiven, changed.”
However Penelope Hegseth nonetheless didn’t decide to testifying on his behalf at a Senate affirmation listening to. “I don’t have an answer to that right now,” she mentioned. “I haven’t thought about that.”
