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Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth by Gage Skidmore 3.jpg
Hegseth in 2021
United States Secretary of Defense
Designate
Assuming office
January 2025
President Donald Trump
Deputy Steve Feinberg (nominee)
Succeeding Lloyd Austin
Personal details
Born
Peter Brian Hegseth

(1980-06-06) June 6, 1980 (age 44)
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Political party Republican
Spouses
  • Meredith Schwarz
    (m. 2004; div. 2009)
  • Samantha Deering
    (m. 2010; div. 2017)
  • Jennifer Rauchet
    (m. 2019)
Children 7
Education
Military service
Branch/service
Years of service
  • 2003–2014; 2019–2021
Rank Major
Unit
  • Minnesota Army National Guard
  • District of Columbia Army National Guard
Battles/wars
Awards
  • Bronze Star (2)
  • Army Commendation Medal (2)
  • Combat Infantryman Badge

Peter Brian Hegseth (/ˈhɛɡsɛθ/; born June 6, 1980) is an American television presenter, author, and Army veteran who is the United States secretary of defense-designate.

After graduating from Princeton University, Hegseth began his career working as an analyst for Bear Stearns. From 2003 to 2014 and again from 2019 to 2021, he served as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, attaining the rank of Major. He received the Bronze Star while serving in the special operations forces during a combat deployment to Iraq in 2005. In 2014, he voluntarily deployed to Afghanistan to train the Afghan security forces. Following his military service, Hegseth became an active figure in conservative and Republican politics and was the executive director of Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. Since 2014, he has been a political commentator for Fox News and was a weekend co-host of Fox & Friends from 2017 to 2024.

In 2016, Hegseth emerged as a supporter of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, and he served as an occasional advisor to Trump throughout the latter's first term as president. Following Hegseth's encouragement, Trump pardoned three soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes in 2019. Hegseth was considered to lead the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration, but David Shulkin was tapped instead. After Trump announced his intention to nominate Hegseth as defense secretary, numerous reports surfaced about financial mismanagement, which threatened his confirmation; during his nomination hearing, Hegseth denied these claims as false. Hegseth holds strongly conservative views, and has been described as a Christian nationalist. He has written books including American Crusade (2020) and The War on Warriors (2024).

Upon the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024, Hegseth was nominated to serve as secretary of defense in Trump's second administration. He was confirmed by the Senate in a 51–50 vote on January 24, 2025, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. He will be the second-youngest person to hold this position, after Donald Rumsfeld.

Early life and education

Hegseth was born on June 6, 1980, in Forest Lake, Minnesota. He attended Forest Lake Area High School and received his Bachelor of Arts at Princeton University in 2003. In 2013, he received a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

At Princeton, Hegseth was the publisher of The Princeton Tory, a conservative student-run publication. He also played on the Princeton Tigers men's basketball team.

Early military deployments

Pete Hegseth on deployment in Iraq
Hegseth on deployment in Iraq

After graduating from Princeton in 2003, Hegseth briefly joined Bear Stearns as an equity capital markets analyst, and was also commissioned as an infantry officer in the Minnesota National Guard.

During 2004–2005, his unit was called to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, under the operational control of the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division, where he served as an infantry platoon leader and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal.

In July 2005, Hegseth was again working as a capital markets analyst at Bear Stearns.

His next deployment lasted from 2005 to 2006. Shortly after returning from Cuba, Hegseth volunteered to serve in Baghdad and Samarra, Iraq, where he served first as an infantry platoon leader and later as civil-military operations officer. While serving in Iraq, Hegseth was traveling in a vehicle struck by a rocket-propelled grenade that did not explode. During his time in Iraq, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and a second Army Commendation Medal.

Civilian life

Upon his return from Iraq, Hegseth worked briefly at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. According to his LinkedIn page, Hegseth left the conservative think tank in 2007 to work as executive director at Vets For Freedom (VFF). The organization advocated a greater troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. His job included responding to the Federal Election Commission as treasurer of the organization. By 2008, VFF was unable to pay its creditors, who became concerned that money was being wasted on organization parties. A 2009 forensic accountant report by creditors led to Hegseth admitting that the organization was about half a million dollars in debt. VFF's backers decided to merge its core functions with another veterans group, Military Families United, and reduce Hegseth's role. By 2011, Hegseth was demoted from executive director and president with a $45,000 salary to an officer with a $5,000 salary. In 2012, in Hegseth's final year at VFF, he was paid $8,000 while the organization received just $81 in grants.

Along with VFF, Hegseth also had been president of Concerned Veterans of America. According to the article "Pete Hegseth's Secret History" in The New Yorker magazine: "A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement and personal misconduct." According to one report by a whistleblower, Hegseth was accused of having "treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account".

In 2012, Hegseth formed the political action committee MN PAC. An APM Reports analysis found that while Hegseth ran the MN PAC political action committee, one-third of its $15,000 in funds were spent on Christmas parties for families and friends. Campaign finance laws in Minnesota do not prohibit such spending. Less than half of the PAC's resources were spent on candidates, and as of March 2018, the PAC had closed its account with the state board.

Senate campaign

In 2012, Hegseth ran for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota. He withdrew from the race after the May 2012 convention, but before the Republican primary election in August, both events in which Kurt Bills won the nomination.

Deployment to Afghanistan

Hegseth returned to active duty in 2012 as a captain. He volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan with the Minnesota Army National Guard to train Afghan security forces. In 2014, Hegseth was promoted to the rank of major and left active duty to be assigned to the Army Individual Ready Reserve (IRR).

In 2013, he received a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Return to civilian life

Pete Hegseth (50764030168)
Hegseth in West Palm Beach, Florida, December 2020

Hegseth was the executive director for Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the Koch brothers from 2013 to 2016. The group advocated greater privatization of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and sought to get veterans involved with conservative political causes. Concerned Veterans for America subsequently hired his brother Philip to work for the non-profit and paid him $108,000, according to tax records from 2016 and 2017. Asked about it, Hegseth's lawyer said that Philip, a May 2015 university graduate, was qualified for the media relations job, and noted that there was no prohibition against private entities hiring family members. According to reporting by The New Yorker, mismanagement concerns led to Hegseth's forced resignation from CVA in January 2016.

Hegseth was considered to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration, but was rejected in favor of David Shulkin in 2017.

Fox News contributor

Hegseth joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014. In December 2018, Hegseth co-hosted Fox News Channel's All-American New Year with Fox Business Network's Kennedy, during which a pre-recorded telephone interview between him and Trump was broadcast. He has been a regular guest on Unfiltered with Dan Bongino since 2021.

  • On June 14, 2015, Hegseth accidentally hit a West Point drummer while axe throwing during a live segment in honor of Flag Day. Hegseth missed the target and the axe hit one of the people behind it. Footage of the accident soon became popular on the internet. In 2018 the drummer filed a lawsuit against Fox and Hegseth alleging that he had suffered "severe and serious personal injuries to his mind and body," and "permanent effects of pain, disability, disfigurement and loss of body function" as a result of their negligence.
  • During the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Hegseth initially backed Marco Rubio, then Ted Cruz, and ultimately Donald Trump. Since then, Hegseth has emerged as a strong Trump supporter. As a Fox News personality, he frequently criticized the media and Democrats. He criticized special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Hegseth has appeared on Fox News Channel, as well as on CNN and MSNBC.
  • From 2017 to 2024, Hegseth was a co-host on the daily morning news and talk television program Fox and Friends.
  • In May 2018, Hegseth mocked The New York Times for ostensibly not covering a story about the capture of five ISIS leaders, referring to the paper as the "failing New York Times", even though the paper had already filed a report on the story.
  • In the 2023 court case of Dominion v. Fox News, Hegseth was, along with his co-hosts on Fox and Friends, presented in the case as having been responsible for "false and defamatory statements of fact about Dominion". Hegseth's surname was spelled as Huegseth in the case.

Campaign to pardon war criminals

In May 2019, it was reported that Trump was considering pardoning several US military service members who had been convicted of committing war crimes, including Eddie Gallagher. The Daily Beast and CNN later reported that Hegseth had sought to convince Trump to pardon these individuals for months. At the same time, Hegseth was discussing these cases on Fox News without disclosing that he had advised Trump to pardon them. In November 2019, Trump pardoned three service members accused or convicted of war crimes. Shortly before Trump announced his decision, Hegseth suggested that Trump was about to take "imminent action" in the cases.

DC National Guard service

Hegseth wrote in his fourth book that he rejoined the Guard from the IRR in 2019. He served in the District of Columbia Army National Guard.

Hegseth was one of 12 national guardsmen flagged as a potential insider threat and removed from the group providing security for the 2021 presidential inauguration of Joe Biden. In 2020, he volunteered to be one of the up-to-25,000 Guard troops authorized by the Pentagon to be put on active duty to help safeguard the January 20, 2021, inauguration. On January 14, 2021, a fellow Guard member who was the unit's security manager and on an anti-terrorism team sent an email to the unit's leaders notifying them of a tattoo on Hegseth's biceps reading "Deus Vult", a phrase the security manager determined was associated with the Crusades and, in the 21st century, with white supremacists who use it to invoke the idea of a white Christian medieval past. Shortly thereafter, Hegseth was told to stay home from the event. Hegseth has said that his National Guard superiors removed him because of his Jerusalem cross tattoo, a Christian symbol which they determined was connected to extremism.

He wrote in his fourth book that this caused him to resign in disgust. Hegseth wrote in the book that he separated from the IRR in January 2024. His final day as a member of the D.C. Army National Guard was March 31, 2021.

U.S. Secretary of Defense

Nomination and confirmation

On November 12, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he intended to nominate Hegseth to serve as the next U.S. secretary of defense. Hegseth ended his deal with Fox News that month so he could take the position.

Republicans have overwhelmingly supported Hegseth's nomination, and Joni Ernst, who initially expressed skepticism, stated that she would be supporting him after "he was adequately able to answer all of my questions."

On January 21, senators received an affidavit from his former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, stating that she had observed "Hegseth's erratic and aggressive behavior". Hegseth denied the affidavit's claims. In terms of the affidavit, the Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats made the following joint statement about it and the FBI background check:

This affidavit is part of a disturbing pattern of behavior that has been documented through numerous public and private reports. The affidavit also raises additional questions about the thoroughness of his FBI background check during a rushed confirmation process.

On January 24, the Senate voted 50-50 for his nomination. Vice President JD Vance broke the tie, voting in favor of his nomination. Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitch McConnell joined the Senate Democrats to vote against the confirmation. Hegseth is only the second cabinet nominee in U.S. history, after Betsy DeVos, to be confirmed with a vice president's tiebreak. He is scheduled to be sworn in on January 25, by Vice President Vance, at the White House. He will be the first Minnesotan to hold the position.

Political positions

Hegseth has been described as a Christian nationalist. Alice Herman of The Guardian has described Hegseth as having a "Christian nationalist ideology", and as "someone immersed in a culture of rightwing Christianity, political extremism and violent ideation". Hegseth's views have been described as far-right by The Guardian.

In his book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth said he believes there are "irreconcilable differences between the Left and the Right in America leading to perpetual conflict that cannot be resolved through the political process". He furthermore called for an "American crusade", which he described as "a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom". Hegseth characterizes "Americanism" in being opposition to forces like feminism, globalism, Marxism and progressivism and says either "Americanism" will prevail or "death" will. In a May 2024 interview where he talked about education, Hegseth said "Democracy, democracy, defend the democracy. Do you know what our founders did not want us to be? A democracy." Hegseth has explicitly rejected democracy in his book, equating it to a leftist demand; he has also expressed support for election-rigging through gerrymandering to "screw Democrats".

Hegseth predicted that if Democrats won the 2020 election, there would be a "national divorce", that the military and the police "will be forced to make a choice", and that "there will be some form of civil war". He also said that conservatives must "mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents" and to "attack first" to deal with a left he equates with "sedition". His book "lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America's internal enemies". Hegseth has described progressives and Democrats as "enemies" of freedom, the U.S. Constitution, and America. Hegseth has said that victory for America includes the end of globalism, socialism, secularism, environmentalism, Islamism, genderism and leftism, the last of which he refers to as a "false religion" and "specter" that views non-believers as "infidels". He has announced his support for American nationalism. Hegseth believes Americans must build a border wall, raise tariffs, learn English and "fight back".

COVID-19

In February 2020, amid the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Hegseth said that Democrats were "rooting for coronavirus to spread. They're rooting for it to grow. They're rooting for the problem to get worse." The next month, Hegseth urged healthy people to get the virus to build immunity. In May 2020, during an appearance with Tucker Carlson he defended calling the SARS-CoV-2 the "Wuhan virus, Chinese virus, maybe even the 'Kung Flu.' A little off-color, but funny and you know, we still live in a free country the last time I checked." Hegseth suggested the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was made up by Democrats to help them in the 2022 midterm elections, saying, "Count on a variant about every October, every two years."

Education

In August 2019, he lamented that "young kids voting" are worried about the adverse effects of climate change. Hegseth also criticized universities for teaching students about "environmentalism and radical environmentalism" rather than a "real threat" such as Islamic extremism.

In June 2022, on a Fox & Friends Weekend segment, Hegseth crossed out Harvard on his diploma, writing in "Critical Theory" and then marking "Return to Sender" across the central body as a protest of Harvard and other such universities. "People will say 'this is just a stunt, you still have a degree' and that's fine. I went, I got the degree, I walked to the classes and all that, but I hope this is a statement that as conservatives and patriots, if we love this country, we can't keep sending our kids and elevating them to universities that are poisoning their mind. I may have survived it, but a lot of kids go there and buy into 'critical theory university,' and that's how we get future leaders, Supreme Court Justices, Senators, others, who see America as an evil place. And Harvard is a factory for that kind of thinking" he said. Hegseth then declared his intention to return the diploma to Harvard.

In 2024, at podcasts with Joshua Haymes, Hegseth criticized public schools for implementing an "egalitarian, dystopian LGBT nightmare". In regards to public schools, he said "The phrase we use in the military is ‘the X’. If you’re standing on the X in an ambush, you’re dead. That means the enemy’s guns are pointed at you. We are all on the X right now, our kids are on the X in government schools." He continues by saying children in school are " accosted and assaulted on a daily basis with evil ideologies that are corrupting their mind, that are corrupting their affections and leaving them incapable of seeking the kind of wisdom that’s required". He proposes an "insurgency" or "guerrilla war" in response, and calls on those who seek to wage an insurgency against public education to emulate Taliban's tactics, saying "Delegitimizing your enemy is a huge part of insurgency, to use the Afghanistan example, that’s what the Taliban did for two decades." He says to delegitimize public education, its opponents could say "these schools fail everybody. No one learns anything in them" and that they are "indoctrination camps. They’re transing your kids". He also supports installing cameras in classrooms.

Foreign affairs

Hegseth has been sharply critical of America's NATO allies, writing, "Outdated, outgunned, invaded, and impotent. Why should America, the European 'emergency contact number' for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to?" and "Maybe if NATO countries actually ponied up for their own defense – but they don't. They just yell about the rules while gutting their militaries and yelling at America for help." In American Crusade, he said "NATO is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States" and called on it to be "scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended". He criticized Turkey's membership of NATO, saying Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan "openly dreams of restoring the Ottoman empire" and is "an Islamist with Islamist visions for the Middle East".

He criticized US funding for the United Nations in American Crusade, calling it "a fully globalist organization that aggressively advances an anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-freedom agenda. Here’s one set of rules for the United States and Israel, another for everyone else." In 2022, he said the Russian invasion of Ukraine "pales in comparison" to "wokeness" and crime. In March 2022, he called Russian president Vladimir Putin a war criminal. He said: "What's at stake is repelling an authoritarian who basically is saying 'I want the Soviet Union back, I want Ukraine back, I want Kyiv back." He has also voiced criticism of US military aid to Ukraine.

In a 2016 interview Hegseth referred to Israel as "God's chosen people". Hegseth spoke at the 2018 Arutz Sheva conference in Jerusalem, where he stated "there's no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible." Speaking at the National Council of Young Israel gala in New York City the same year, he said "Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today." He opposed the two-state solution and supported Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. Hegseth has stated that Israel and other international allies can help America defeat its "domestic enemies" which he describes as leftists, progressives, and Democrats. In American Crusade, he compared his support for Israel to the Crusades, saying "We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade." He also states that "if you love those, learn to love the state of Israel".

Hegseth has called Iran's government an "evil regime". In January 2020, Hegseth expressed strong support for Trump's decision to kill Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. He also called on Trump to bomb the Iranian homeland, including cultural sites if they were storing weapons. In May 2020, Hegseth said the "communist Chinese" wanted to "end our civilization". Hegseth later said China was creating a military "specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America".

Hegseth was a supporter of the Iraq War and expressed his support for the Iraq War troop surge in a 2006 op-ed.

Islam

In his 2016 memoir, In the Arena, Hegseth wrote that he related to an online image of an Islamic State fighter, saying the soldier is "fighting for something greater than himself. He is fighting for his God" and continuing by saying "I recognize that fighter, even though I’ve never met him. I am drawn to him because I relate to him, I deplore what he stands for, what he does and how he does it. He is a soldier of hate, subjugation and sheer evil. But I understand his passions."

In American Crusade, Hegseth says Islam "is not a religion of peace, and it never has been" and claims "all modern Muslim countries are either formal or de facto no-go zones for practicing Christians and Jews". He said Islam was "almost entirely captured and leveraged by Islamists." He claimed Islamists planned to demographically, culturally and politically "conquer" Europe and America, allying with secularism to crush "our nation's Judeo-Christian institutions". He said Islamists planned to "seed the West with as many Muslims as possible" and "thanks to their very high birth rates relative to native populations and their strategically insular culture – the sons and daughters of those migrants and refugees multiply in greater numbers than do native citizens." He pointed out the elections of Muslim officials in the United Kingdom and the increase of the Muslim population in Europe to say that the United States would follow the same path without an intervention. Hegseth has stated that the end of the US military would allow "Islamists" to "wipe America and Israel off the map". Hegseth has faced allegations of chanting "kill all Muslims" at a work event at a bar. He has voiced support for the Crusades.

January 6 Capitol attack

Hegseth has falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. He has defended the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, calling them patriots who had been "re-awoken to the reality of what the left has done" to the country. He has defended January 6 figure Jacob Chansley in particular. Days after the attack, Hegseth appeared on a podcast hosted by Newt Gingrich, where he downplayed the violence during the attack, and also spread conspiracy theories alleging the attack was instigated by the Antifa.

LGBTQ rights

When Hegseth was the publisher of The Princeton Tory in 2002, he and the publication's editors published editorials that said gay people were abnormal and should not have the right to marry.

Hegseth has since criticized policies allowing gay people to serve in the U.S. military. He has said that both the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and its 2011 repeal were gateways to broader cultural changes that undermined military cohesion. In 2015, he described such policies as "social engineering" that would "erode standards." In June 2024, Hegseth criticized a military ad featuring a soldier with two lesbian mothers as part of a "Marxist" agenda prioritizing social justice over combat readiness. In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, he wrote that he accepted LGBTQ service members early in his National Guard service, believing that because "America was at war...we needed everybody," but later came to see this as naive, stating that "our good faith was used against us." When questioned in December 2024, Hegseth told CNN he did not oppose the DADT repeal, calling citations of his writings and comments "false reporting."

In a podcast with Hugh Hewitt, Hegseth said that the recruitment challenges of the United States Armed Forces were caused by advertising that featured diverse service members: "There are not enough lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the 82nd Airborne".

Hegseth opposes transgender troops in the military. In a podcast with Jay Cutler and Sam Mackey, Hegseth said that transgender soldiers are "not deployable" because they are "reliant on chemicals". Hegseth argued that "being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences".

Military

Hegseth has advocated ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the US military; for example, he has said that the military slogan "our diversity is our strength" is the "dumbest phrase on planet Earth". He has called for removing military leaders who support such programs. He said he supports firing General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has voiced opposition towards renaming U.S. Army installations named for Confederate soldiers.

In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth criticized efforts to counter extremism within the US military, writing that "Rooting out 'extremism,' today's generals push rank-and-file patriots out of their formations". He has characterized DEI and similar initiatives as "discriminatory ideologies that turn off the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks." In the same book, Hegseth called for the US to ignore the Geneva Conventions, arguing they give enemy forces an unfair advantage: "We are just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it ... If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren't we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!"

Hegseth has drawn parallels between military leadership and biblical figures, particularly citing the story of Gideon, who led a small force to victory. He wrote that "When we maintain our covenant, we are Gideon," emphasizing the importance of divine support in military success.

Women's rights

Regarding women serving on the front lines, Hegseth has said, "I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated." Hegseth argued that men are more capable in combat roles because of biological factors and said "[e]verything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse". According to an affidavit from his former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, Pete Hegseth allegedly once said women should not have the right to vote or work.

Personal life

In 2004, Hegseth married his first wife, Meredith Schwarz, who was his high school girlfriend from Minnesota; they divorced in 2009 after he admitted to five affairs. In 2010 he married his second wife, Samantha Deering; they have three sons.

In August 2017, Hegseth's daughter Gwen was born to Fox executive producer Jennifer Rauchet. In September 2017, Samantha filed for divorce, which took 10 months to finalize. Hegseth and Rauchet, who has three young children from her first marriage, married on August 16, 2019.

Hegseth lives in Tennessee. He has said that he underwent a religious transformation in 2018 following his marriage to his third wife. Hegseth is a member of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a church in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.

Hegseth has several tattoos, among them a Jerusalem cross on his chest and one reading "Deus Vult", a Latin phrase meaning "God wills it", on his bicep.

Books

Hegseth's books include:

  • Hegseth, Pete (2022). Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation. Broadside Books. ISBN: 978-0-06-321504-7.

Hegseth wrote the foreword to the 2017 book The Case Against the Establishment (ISBN: 978-1-6826-1474-7) by Nick Adams and Dave Erickson.

Awards, decorations, and badges

Combat Infantry Badge.svg Combat Infantryman Badge
Bronze oak leaf cluster
Bronze Star (x2)
Joint Service Commendation Medal
Bronze oak leaf cluster
Army Commendation Medal (x2)
National Defense Service Medal ribbon.svg National Defense Service Medal
Bronze star
Bronze star
Afghanistan Campaign Medal (with 2 service stars)
Bronze star
Bronze star
Iraq Campaign Medal (with 2 service stars)
Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal
Global War on Terrorism Service Medal ribbon.svg Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
Armed Forces Reserve Medal (with bronze hourglass device)
Army Service Ribbon
Army Overseas Service Ribbon
NATO Medal (ISAF)

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Pete Hegseth para niños

  • New Yorkers in journalism
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