Who is Pete Hegseth? Trump’s war-hungry secretary of defense
The US secretary of defense’s press conferences on the US-Israeli war with Iran have scaled rhetorical heights not before seen at the Pentagon.
US president Donald Trump’s bombastic, self-styled “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth certainly has the looks for the job. His chiselled jaw and slicked-back hair channel a particular type of American action man. As US defense secretary, Hegseth has the platform and the might of the world’s most powerful military to wage war on what he believes is a just enemy – and he isn’t holding back. As US and Israeli bombs rain down on Iran, Hegseth’s press conferences have scaled rhetorical heights never before seen at the traditionally solemn Pentagon. Strutting before the cameras, Hegseth has promised “death and destruction from the sky all day long”, pummelling the Iranian regime until “they are toast” and “punching them while they’re down” so that they retreat into hiding because “that’s what rats do”.
Gone is any attempt at solemnity for civilian casualties. Instead we get screen-ready soundbites that “war is hell”, and a dismissal of traditional rules of engagement in favour of hyper-aggressive tactics “designed to unleash American power, not shackle it”. Hegseth feels his unrestrained swagger has been earned: he is a former National Guard infantry officer who served with US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming a Fox News host. The 45-year-old’s oozing machismo is also well known and he does not need to be asked twice before hitting the floor for a round of press ups.
But Hegseth’s motivations go deeper than his angry smirk. Underneath the TV polish is a man driven by deeply held conservative Christian convictions. Born in 1980 to a middle-class family in Minneapolis, Hegseth studied politics at Princeton University, where he edited the elite school’s conservative newspaper, The Princeton Tory, in which he railed against diversity policies and feminism. After graduation, and four months before 9/11, he joined the US Army Reserves, working sporadically on Wall Street between overseas deployments. He then went on to work at a veterans’ organisation, before joining Fox News in 2014. In both positions his alleged heavy drinking came under scrutiny. During fractious Senate hearings ahead of his confirmation, Hegseth was accused of inappropriate drunken behaviour, including towards women.
Hegseth has always denied any wrongdoing and says he returned traumatised from Iraq and drank heavily to cope, before finding salvation in a controversial Christian congregation. He is a member of the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a church linked to Doug Wilson, a deeply conservative Idaho-based pastor who believes that homosexuality is a sin, has questioned women’s right to vote and has said that wives should obey their husband’s desires in bed to avoid marital rape. Rather than distance himself from Wilson, Hegseth recently invited him to speak at a Pentagon prayer breakfast.
Hegseth’s beliefs have come under scrutiny before. He was barred from serving at Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because a superior in his National Guard unit was concerned that his chest tattoos of the Jerusalem Cross were connected to extremism. While he has denied any affiliation to the far-right, Hegseth has frequently adopted the language of the crusades, stating in his 2020 book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, that Islam “is not a religion of peace”.
It is not clear how the current war against the Islamic Republic of Iran fits into his grand narrative of a civilisational conflict. What matters most for his career is that he and Trump are on the same page, outdoing each other with their boasts of how wonderfully the Iran war is going. But Hegseth’s full throttle approach is not without risk. Plenty can go wrong in a conflict that appears to have no clear end game. Just a few weeks ago, Kristi Noem, another of Trump’s unconventional supporters with an image-first approach, was removed as homeland security secretary when the American public turned on Trump’s hardline immigration policies. Hegseth should take note: sometimes the loudest cheerleader is the easiest scapegoat.
