Pete Hegseth’s views on women in combat were a matter of public record long before the Senate Armed Services Committee heard his case to become Donald Trump’s Defense secretary. Women are “life-givers,” Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors. “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially not in combat units,” he added. In a November appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, he 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.” On Tuesday, the Fox News personality and Army National Guard veteran tried to rewrite history, claiming that his prior comments were merely about “standards” in the military.
The “contributions” of senators Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Joni Ernst of Iowa, both veterans, were “indispensable,” he said, adding, “My comments are about having the same standards across the board.” But it’s difficult to believe Hegseth, who has promoted traditional gender roles for years and, with them, a view of women as submissive nurturers unfit for the rigors of combat. Though Hegseth has changed course before — he initially opposed Trump’s run for president in 2016 — his views on gender appear to be integral not just to his public persona but to his professed religious convictions as a conservative Christian.
Some may be tempted to call Hegseth a hypocrite, not entirely without reason. He is an infamous philanderer who has been married three times, actions that contradict his beliefs at least in a superficial sense. Adultery is a sin, but in Hegseth’s case, it’s also consistent with a worldview that considers women less than. Women can be easily exchanged for one another, and they are just as easily condemned. The woman who accused him of rape in 2017 made a “false claim,” he told senators on Tuesday. Hegseth’s yearslong opposition to women in combat is a symptom of deeper rot.
Republican senators praised Hegseth for his tale of Christian redemption, a narrative their Democratic colleagues mostly refused to challenge with one exception: Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia questioned Hegseth about his past adultery. “You’ve taken an oath, like you would take an oath to be secretary of Defense, in all of your weddings to be faithful to your wife. Is that correct?” he asked the nominee. Kaine’s colleagues chose to highlight Hegseth’s past comments about women in combat. His apparent change of heart did not persuade Democratic committee members. “You have to change how you see women to do this job well, and I don’t know that you can,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would later add, “I’ve heard of deathbed conversions, but this is the first time I’ve seen a nomination conversion.” Republicans were more amenable to his “conversion,” as Warren put it.
Ernst, a former National Guard commander and sexual-assault survivor, has been seen as a key vote on the committee and had previously sounded noncommittal on the subject of Hegseth. On Tuesday, however, she lobbed softball after softball in Hegseth’s direction during the hearing and announced that evening that she would vote in his favor. The reason isn’t a mystery. The New York Times reported that Ernst had been targeted by ads and social-media posts and threatened by potential primary challenges from Iowa Republicans, but the pressure doesn’t completely explain her seeming capitulation. She is deeply conservative and has always been loyal to Trump. Her vote is about ideology, too — an ideology that is at odds with women’s liberation. Ernst would not even meet with Hegseth’s accuser.
If women are liars, to be attacked or ignored, which role, then, do Hegseth and his allies imagine for them? Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma offered a clue. “We’ve all made mistakes; I’ve made mistakes,” he said on Tuesday before addressing Hegseth’s latest wife. “Jennifer, thank you for loving him through that mistake, because the only reason why I’m here and not in prison is because my wife loved me too,” he added. The right kind of woman can redeem a sinful man; she is an almost-Christlike figure, or at least a saint. Mullin asked Hegseth to explain why he loves his wife and prompted him to remember his children. Jennifer, Hegseth said, is “an amazing mother … of our blended family of seven kids.”
Women can be saints and mothers — “life-givers,” as Hegseth once put it, but little else. His views haven’t substantially changed, as much as he tries to explain away his prior comments on women in combat. He is fully part of a conservative movement that wants to relegate women to a specific — and ultimately inferior — role in society. His likely rise to the top of the Pentagon offers more proof that a thriving anti-feminist backlash threatens the gains that women have won. The fight for women’s liberation isn’t just a fight for political or cultural power but a struggle for the complexity of women and the right to be something other than saint or mother. Hegseth can praise women veterans all he wants now, but the truth is hard to disguise. He and his allies would reduce women to their old enforced place as the angel in the house.
