During an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday, December 4, the mother of Pete Hegseth, the embattled Trump nominee for Secretary of Defense, took on the old allegations of Pete Hegseth directed against him when he ran charitable veterans organizations. Particularly, she refuted media claims about a letter she wrote him,
In the email at issue, Hegseth’s mom, Penelope, said, “You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth, and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
Continuing, she said, “Don’t you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us… that’s what babies do. It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character. I don’t want to write emails like this and never thought I would. If it damages our relationship further, then so be it, but at least I have said my piece.”
Of course, the media had a field day with that. But what they left out is that, shortly after sending it, she sent a follow-up email immediately apologizing. In it, she noted that the email was written in “anger” while her son was dealing with a painful and difficult divorce and that she found it “disgusting” that media outlets were publishing it. She added, “I know my son. He is a good father and husband.”
Appearing on Fox and Friends, Penelope said, “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.” She was asked, “You are here to tell us because you are in the news now. Why did you write that e-mail? What was going on?”
Replying, she said, “Go back seven years, if we all went back seven years, we would see maybe we are not the people we are today. 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.”
She continued, “There is emotion. We say things and I wrote that in haste, with deep emotion, as a parent. 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.”
Slamming the media, she added, “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.”
Doocy asked her, “To recap, you were angry about what was going on, his behavior during the divorce, and you wrote that e-mail. Couple hours later, you apologize and you worked it out?” She said, “Oh, yeah, Pete and I are very close today. Our whole family is very tight-knit. I think that we as parents always parent.”
Watch that here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
"*" indicates required fields