Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, urged Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth on Monday to face head-on allegations threatening to derail his confirmation.
The veteran and former Fox News host has come under intense scrutiny for his lack of government experience and newly unearthed reports of personal and sexual misconduct dating back years, the latest being claims of financially mismanaging veterans’ advocacy groups and repeated intoxication.
“Eventually, he’s going to have to come out and start visiting with the media,” Tuberville told reporters following a private meeting with the Cabinet nominee. “I think right now, his No. 1 objective is to go out and sell himself to at least 51 or 52 senators. That’s the job he needs to do to get confirmed. At the end of the day, he’s got to be well prepared for the hearings.”
Still, Tuberville offered a full-throated endorsement of Hegseth, whom he described as a longtime personal friend who would act as a much-needed “drill sergeant” to “straighten the military out, to get the woke DEI affiliation out.” Tuberville will play a role in advancing Hegseth’s nomination from the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will hold a confirmation hearing in January.
“There’s not going to be anything to this, at the end of the day,” Tuberville said, noting he did not discuss with Hegseth the various personal allegations levied against him but has done so in previous conversations.
“He had a good explanation, but I’m not going to try to explain to y’all about his personal endeavors over the many years,” Tuberville continued. “That’s up to him.”
Hegseth, responding briefly to reporters in the halls of the Capitol in between meetings with senators, appeared unwilling to heed Tuberville’s advice for a PR tour.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” Hegseth told a reporter when prompted whether he was ever drunk on the job at Concerned Veterans for America. “I look forward to talking to senators.”
Hegseth was president of the organization from 2013 to 2016 but was reportedly pushed out over claims by staffers of sexual misconduct against female employees and inappropriate intoxication at work-related events. A New Yorker story, which reported the details, also featured accusations that Hegseth financially mismanaged a separate group years prior called Vets for Freedom.
A 2017 police report of a sexual assault allegedly committed by Hegseth was previously revealed, but the incident did not lead to criminal charges, and Hegseth has said it was a consensual encounter with an unnamed woman.
Tuberville, the Auburn-football-coach-turned-United-States-senator, has a cozy relationship with Trump and has been a leading critic of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that he says have kneecapped the U.S. military under President Joe Biden. He also led a one-manned blockade lasting nearly a year against hundreds of military promotions in protest of the administration’s Pentagon abortion policy for active-duty women but ultimately relented in December 2023 amid growing frustration from fellow Republicans he was weakening the armed services.
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Tuberville described Hegseth as a “warfighter, somebody that’s not for the upper echelon.”
“He’s to make the military stronger, better trained, put the money in the right spot,” Tuberville said. “He’s going to be for the people that actually do the fighting, not for the people that plan the fighting.”