President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his belief that his defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth can secure confirmation but admitted he has no assurances from Senators and sidestepped concerns about the former Fox News host’s drinking.
In a clip released by Meet the Press ahead of Trump’s first post-election network interview, NBC host Kristen Welker asked the former and future president about reports that claimed Hegseth, a veteran and conservative commentator, had a problem with excessive drinking following his return from deployment to Iraq.
“You don’t drink yourself, you’ve talked about how devastating drinking can be,” Welker says in the clip. “How concerned are you that the person who you picked for this top job at the defense department, at least according to those who worked with him, has struggled with drinking?”
Trump responded that he’s “spoken to people that know him [Hegseth] very well, and they say he does not have a drinking problem.”
In addition to his terse answer on Hegseth’s drinking, Trump insisted that Hegseth can get confirmed, telling Welker that Hegseth is “a very smart guy.”
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“People were a little bit concerned,” Trump admitted. “He’s a young guy with a tremendous track record, actually: He went to Princeton and went to Harvard. He was a good student at both, but he loves the military, and I think people are starting to see it, so, we’re going to be working on his nomination along with a lot of others.”
However, when pressed on whether he has received any assurances from Senators that they will confirm Hegseth, Trump said, “No,” but said that he had received calls from Senators to tell him they thought Hegseth was “fantastic.”
Newsweek reached out by email on Friday evening to the Trump transition team for comment.
Hegseth has fiercely denied having had a problem with excessive drinking and accused former anonymous colleagues who spoke on the issue—even claiming that he would on occasion show up to work smelling of alcohol—of being “jealous” or wanting “a little bit of retribution.”
During an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, Hegseth argued: “They never ask the people closest to me, they never ask the people who are involved directly. They never ask the people closest to me.”
“All the folks at Fox and Friends have come out and said: ‘This is not Pete and we’ve worked with Pete for 10 years, every single morning, every single day’,” Hegseth said.
Trump this week came out in strong support of Hegseth, saying that his nominee “is doing very well.”
The president-elect on Friday wrote in a Truth Social post that “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”, which struck a different tone to his more subdued and somber demeanor during his Meet the Press interview.
Hegseth has spent much of the week on Capitol Hill meeting with Senators, and Trump’s allies initiated a strong defense of Hegseth, including a $1 million pledge from the Heritage Foundation to help secure his nomination.
“We’re going to earn those votes,” Hegseth said in Washington, D.C., this week. “As long as Donald Trump wants me in this fight, I’m going to be standing right here.”
