President-elect Donald Trump announced that he will nominate Pete Hegseth ’03 as his Secretary of Defense.
“Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country,” Trump wrote in a campaign statement released Tuesday evening. “Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.”
Hegseth most recently worked as a weekend host of Fox & Friends. His atypical ascent towards the top-job in the Department of Defense has generated confusion, primarily over his lack of experience.
A close political ally of the president-elect, the foundations of his political trajectory began as a Princeton undergraduate.
Hegseth earned an A.B. in Politics from Princeton in 2003, wrote a thesis entitled “Modern Presidential Rhetoric and the Cold War Context,” and graduated from the Army ROTC program. On campus, he served as publisher of The Princeton Tory, the campus’s flagship conservative publication, and was known as “Pete Hegseth of the Princeton Tory,” despite his varsity spot on the men’s basketball team and membership in Cap & Gown, according to a 2012 profile in The Daily Princetonian.
Known for leading the Tory’s series of controversial “acerbic paragraph takedowns of liberalism” called “The Rant,” he propelled the publication to campus notoriety, taking polarizing positions in his writing.
In an April 2002 issue, Hegseth wrote, “As the publisher of the Tory, I strive to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.”
Six months later, Hegseth and other Tory editors penned in their October issue: “Boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.”
“We were pushing the envelope and a lot of times we gave our writers a lot of latitude and that’s going to come with differences of opinion,” he said in an interview during his failed bid for Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) seat in 2012. “There is obviously some phraseology or terms or language that [was] maybe too sharp.”
Upon graduation from Princeton, Hegseth worked as an equity capital markets analyst while serving as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard. Hegseth completed tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay during this time. He was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman Badge.
His career following the military featured a mix of veterans’ advocacy work and conservative political activism, including stints at Vets For Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. After failing to grasp the Republican nomination during his 2012 Senate bid, he founded a political action committee (PAC) called MN Pac. In 2014, he joined Fox News as a political contributor.
Following Trump’s election in 2016, Hegseth was floated to lead the United States Department of Veteran Affairs, but career civil-servant David Shulkin ended up securing the nomination.
Hegseth did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The defense secretary role was notably volatile during the first Trump White House. Jim Mattis, Trump’s first Secretary of Defense, resigned in 2019 citing leadership differences. His successor — Mark Esper — was fired days after the 2020 presidential election.
The last Princeton alumnus to serve as Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld ’54. Rumsfeld served as both the 13th and 21st Secretary of Defense under Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush from 1975 to 1977 and 2001 to 2006, respectively.
Hayk Yengibaryan is an associate Sports editor and News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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