With Pete Hegseth’s appointment to lead the Pentagon on the brink amid a flood of news stories about his alleged sexual misconduct, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement of veterans’ groups, the former Fox News host’s mother Penelope Hegseth appeared on her son’s old show Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning to “set the record straight” regarding the 2018 email she sent accusing him of mistreating women for years.
Sitting down with the Fox & Friends crew, Penelope kicked off her interview by essentially pleading with President-elect Donald Trump to not drop her son as his nominee for secretary of defense. It has been reported that Trump is considering a list of other potential nominees following the controversies surrounding the ex-Fox star, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Thank you for your belief in my son,” she said. “We all believe in him. We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I’m not that mother and I hope people will hear that story today and truth of that story.”
She continued: “So the other thing, I am here to tell the truth. To tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to senators on the hill, especially female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and you will listen to Pete.”
As far as the email she wrote to her son that was recently published by The New York Times, which was sent while Pete was divorcing his second wife after having an affair with a Fox News producer (who would become his third wife), Penelope insisted that this wasn’t the “whole story” and that her son is a different person than he was years ago.
“This all went back seven years, we would say, maybe, we are not the people we are today,” Penelope declared.
“They were going through — Pete, and his wife — were going through a difficult divorce, a very emotional time and I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There is emotion. We say things and I wrote that in haste, with deep emotion, as a parent.”
She added: “About two hours later, my husband tells me I should think through things more. Pete and I are both very passionate people. I wrote that out of love, two hours later I retracted it with an apology and nobody has seen that. It was a difficult time. I want to say something about the media. Part of today is to discredit media and how they operate. When they contact you, I let a few phone calls go. They call and threaten you, first thing they do. Unless you make a statement, we will publish it as is. That is despicable way to treat anymore, threats are dangerous and they are hard on families.”
