Former Fox News personality and all-around macho-man Pete Hegseth wants to be your next president, according to officials familiar with the self-proclaimed Secretary of War’s thinking.
Those sources, who spoke anonymously in order to be frank about the Trump Cabinet member’s ambitions, told the Washington Post that Hegseth’s trip to Iowa on Monday suggests he may very well have his sights set on the White House. The Defense Secretary, 46, headed out to stump for GOP Rep. Zach Nunn in the battleground state, where presidential hopefuls have historically tested their mettle.
He also stumped for Sen. Darline Graham in the early presidential primary state of South Carolina last week.
He also showed up for congressional candidate Ed Gallrein in his successful primary run against incumbent Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie earlier in May. CBS notes that it’s rare for any sitting defense secretary to head out campaigning for candidates.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon for comment on claims made by the Post’s sources. A spokesperson for the department told the newspaper that Hegseth was visiting Iowa “in his personal capacity,” and that he’d only be using military aircraft for the trip “due to the continuous need for secure communications and responsive transportation for national security.”
DOD officials have good cause to be anxious about “secure communications.” Hegseth quickly became synonymous with its polar opposite less than two months after the Senate confirmed him last year, when The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a group chat on encrypted messaging app Signal.
Signal is not generally authorized for official government communications. That didn’t stop the Defense Secretary from using the chat to share sensitive details of military strikes against Iranian proxies in Yemen with 19 other top Trump administration members, including Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
The “Signalgate” saga represents just one of the many scandals Hegseth would have to square with voters if he’s seriously considering a run for the nation’s highest office. Others have included, in no particular order, repeated purges of military top brass and “DEI hires” across the department, plans for free hormone therapy for service members with low testosterone, efforts to formally censure Democratic Rep. Mark Kelly, and evicting or otherwise censoring mainstream defense and national security correspondents from the Pentagon press corps.
Even Hegseth’s alleged “kill-them-all” orders during military strikes on suspected narcotrafficking boats in the Caribbean, slammed by legal experts as crimes against humanity, would likely prove an easier campaign sell than his tireless cheerleading for Trump’s war of choice with Iran.
That campaign, which has included a U.S. airstrike on an Iranian school that killed 165 civilians, dozens of them children, is among the least popular conflicts since the advent of modern polling. A meager 28 percent of voters approve of the war, according to a CNN poll fielded in late July—just seven points below the 35 percent approval the network put Hegseth’s job performance at earlier in April.
His numbers are only likely to have sunk lower over conditions aboard some of the military vessels dispatched to fight Trump’s war in the Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln has now been deployed for more than 260 days, over 200 of them without a port call, and the families of its 5,000 sailors and Marines have spent weeks describing a crew on the brink of total collapse.
There have been reports of moldy showers, broken toilets, no hot water for weeks, meals down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas, alongside water contamination and deck safety concerns. These claims have all heaped pressure on an administration already struggling to justify why it is now approaching six months of a conflict the president promised would last only a “few weeks.” Hegseth has insisted that reports have “completely misrepresented” conditions on board.
Told by the press that families were worried for service members’ safety and sanity, Hegseth said flatly: “No, they’re not.”
Then there’s the drinking. The New Yorker reported in November 2024 that Hegseth was removed from his post at Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative advocacy group, in part over appearing repeatedly drunk on the job. NBC News later added that former Fox News colleagues had seen him drink before going on air, prompting him to promise senators at his confirmation hearing he would not touch alcohol as secretary.
These are only the challenges the Defense Secretary has largely created for himself since joining Trump’s team. They do not include the other allegations of assault, sexism, or links to far-right extremist ideology that surfaced during his hearing—much less that any 2028 primary bid would almost certainly see him running against the vice president, who enjoys backing from some of MAGA’s most wealthy and powerful benefactors.
Claims of Hegseth’s presidential ambitions will not go over well with the man who currently sits in the Oval Office. Trump has spent the year batting away questions about who succeeds him, pitting Vance against Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his blessing as heir to the MAGA throne while toying with voters by suggesting he may even run for a constitution-busting third term himself. A Cabinet secretary working a battleground state is the kind of news item he tends to notice.
