Bruce Coffman @brucecoffman.bsky.social
According to a December 3, 2024 Vanity Fair article by Gabriel Sherman, Pete Hegseth is "a conservative culture warrior, a central casting alpha male who believes in guns, God, and the primacy of the family unit." Doesn't sound too horrible, right? The picture perfect all-American start and bitter end to his first marriage seems to shed a little more light on his character, or lack thereof.
According to the Vanity Fair article, In 2004, Hegseth married high school sweetheart and homecoming nominee Meredith Schwarz at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Minnesota, according to two attendees. Hegseth was already transforming into a "culture warrior." His blossoming interest in right-wing politics seemed to coincide with his waning college basketball career. (Princeton’s student newspaper reportedly described him as a “a recruiting afterthought” who had “patiently toiled in obscurity” while on the team.)
The article continues that after 9/11, Hegseth enlisted in Princeton’s ROTC program and became a company commander. He also wrote opinion columns for The Princeton Tory, the campus’s conservative publication. He expressed loud and harsh views against feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. “By advocating government support of the traditional family unit, a return of the acceptability of the ‘homemaker’ vocation, freedom from oppressive government oversight, moral responsibility, and the revival of religious faith, conservatives provide a working blueprint for a free and prosperous future,” Hegseth wrote in 2002. Dear Jeezus. The cray cray had already begun to rear it's ugly head.
Pete and Meredith's nice little traditional marriage was short-lived. In December 2008, Schwarz filed for divorce after Hegseth admitted that he cheated on her, according to four sources close to the couple. I guess he was demonstrating that moral responsibility for us. Thanks, Pete. (APM Reports previously revealed that the infidelity was listed as grounds in the couple’s divorce proceedings.)
Schwarz was reportedly left emotionally and psychologically scarred by Pete's cheating. “She was gaslighted by him heavily throughout their relationship,” one source told Vanity Fair. “As far as everyone else was concerned, they were viewed by many as this all-American power couple that were making big things for themselves.” (Schwarz declined to comment. Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, did not respond to a detailed list of questions for the story, and instead provided a statement that impugned the reporter's record as a journalist.)
To further demonstrate "moral responsibility" to America, Pete was dating Samantha Deering, whom he met while working in Washington, DC. In 2010, he married Deering, with whom he has three children. In 2017, Deering filed for divorce after Hegseth fathered a child with his Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. Hegseth and Rauchet married in 2019 at Trump’s golf course in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Third marriage, so far. How very moral.
He would be just another hypocritical conservative who can preach it but refuses to live it, but as the Senate prepares for hearings to confirm the former Fox & Friends weekend host’s appointment as Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, his biography and beliefs have become a matter of public record and debate. In the role, Hegseth would oversee a military with roughly 1.3 million active duty personnel and a nearly $900 billion budget. In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth suggests the military should pursue a Christian mission. “Our present moment is much like the eleventh century,” he wrote, adding: “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American Crusade.” An American Crusade? Does Pete want to turn the US military on its own citizens to force them to embrace the Christian "faith?"
On November 14, Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman reported that Trump transition officials were blindsided by an allegation of sexual misconduct by Hegseth against a woman at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California, in October 2017. While Hegseth was still married to Deering and shortly after Rauchet gave birth to his son. I know, the women in his life are getting hard to keep up with.
The woman who has alleged the sexual misconduct said Hegseth’s assault happened while her husband and two young children were asleep in the hotel. Parlatore, Hegseth’s lawyer, told Breitbart News (which is anything but news) that the woman pursued Hegseth. But Hegseth later paid the woman to keep the incident confidential. Isn't that called... hush money? Visiting with senators on Capitol Hill last month, Hegseth declined to discuss the allegations in detail. “The matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared. And that’s where I’m going to leave it,” he told reporters. Case closed because you say so, right, Pete?
More recently, Pete's mom Penelope Hegseth's strong rebuke of his treatment of women has been released publicly. Of course she's now on the "rehab tour" Fox Not News and similar conservative-friendly media circuit saying he's a "good boy, give him a shot." Thanks, mom. Eyeroll. A recent New Yorker story detailed whistleblower allegations made against Hegseth by staff at Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America, another nonprofit he ran later in his career, that accused him of public intoxication and financial mismanagement. One former employee wrote that they had seen Hegseth drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims” at a bar in 2015. But Pete and his laywer deny all this, so it's all good. Right?
According to reports, first wife Schwarz's friends say Hegseth displayed his hard-right politics during that first marriage. “We would argue about women’s reproductive rights. He had some regressive views on birth control. His position was basically, if you got pregnant it was your fault,” one said. Another person close to Hegseth recalled him joking that women shouldn’t have the right to vote. Read that again. Women should not have the right to vote. Even as a joke, do we need someone with such antiquated views anywhere near our federal government?
After informing the first wife of his cheating, Pete reportedly talked on the phone with his younger brother. “The conversation lasted four hours,” a source familiar with the call said. “Pete said he no longer believed in God and family values. He claimed he no longer wanted to seek the limelight. He said, and this quote is as clear as day, ‘I’m a fucked up individual.’” A fucked up individual to lead what is supposed to be the most powerful military in the entire world? Wow.
Pete eventually, reportedly, reveled a total of 5 affairs during his first marriage. Five affairs from a man who wants to lecture us on how to live our lives and even mandate it by law based on the holy Bible. I think that's some fucked up shit right there.
Besides the moral implications that he is an unfaithful piece of shit, according to Pentagon rules known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, adultery can be subject to court-martial. Gary Barthel, a managing partner at the Military Law Center in Carlsbad, California, told Vanity Fair, “the military routinely enforces UCMJ Article 134, which prohibits extramarital sexual conduct. Such cases can be prosecuted via court-martial or the command can pursue administrative disciplinary action and/or administrative separation action.” At the bare minimum, he sets absolutely no kind of example for our military men and women to follow.
Could Trump have scraped the absolute bottom of the barrel any harder for his Cabinet nominations?
You can read the full Vanity Fair article here. Please drop your comments and let's get a robust community discussion going. Thanks for reading.
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on December 5, 2024 at 4:00PM PST
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