Pete Hegseth launched a public campaign on Wednesday to shore up wobbling support for his selection as defense secretary, saying in a high-profile interview that President-elect Donald J. Trump told him: “I got your back. It’s a fight. They’re coming after you.”
But even as Mr. Hegseth insisted that Mr. Trump was urging him to fight, the president-elect appeared to be having serious conversations about picking Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and his onetime primary rival, to be the defense secretary instead.
Mr. Trump has told people close to him that he likes the idea of giving Mr. DeSantis the job, saying it would be a “big story” if he resurrected Mr. DeSantis after defeating him. The president-elect has also praised Mr. DeSantis’s ability to run the state of Florida, where Mr. Trump lives, and has mentioned that he is “a Navy guy.”
Mr. Trump has privately mentioned Mike Waltz, the Florida congressman he picked as his national security adviser, as another option, pointing out that he would be easily confirmed by the Senate. But people close to Mr. Trump believe that Mr. DeSantis is his favored alternative at this moment if he decides to abandon Mr. Hegseth.
Speaking with Megyn Kelly of SiriusXM radio, Mr. Hegseth dismissed allegations of rape, sexual assault, financial mismanagement and drunken behavior as nothing but a fiction created by Mr. Trump’s enemies. He compared it to accusations leveled against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
“It is the classic art of the smear,” Mr. Hegseth said. “Take whatever tiny kernels of truth — and there are tiny, tiny ones in there — and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I am definitely not.”
Asked by reporters on Capitol Hill earlier in the day whether he would back down amid reports that Mr. Trump was already talking to Mr. DeSantis as a possible alternative, he said: “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter.”
Mr. Hegseth had arrived on Capitol Hill to talk with senators in the hopes of quelling concerns about the news media reports of his behavior, including a 2018 email from Mr. Hegseth’s mother accusing him of a pattern of abuse toward women.
Penelope Hegseth, who said in the email that her son “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around,” told a Fox News interviewer on Wednesday that she regretted sending the email and that Mr. Hegseth was no longer the person she lashed out at in 2018.
“Pete is a new person,” Mrs. Hegseth said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” She urged senators who will consider his nomination to listen to him now. “He’s redeemed, forgiven, changed,” she said.
Mrs. Hegseth’s appearance was greeted with optimism by some people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, who have told associates they believe it could help minimize some of the concerns about the swirl of allegations. They have also been encouraged by a burst of expressions of support for Mr. Hegseth from conservative activists on social media.
But Mr. Trump’s allies fear that the public reporting about the president-elect’s private conversations with Mr. DeSantis, which was published earlier by The Wall Street Journal, has emboldened Republican senators to question Mr. Hegseth’s viability.
Wednesday could be a critical day for his chances. He is scheduled to meet with Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican and combat veteran who has spoken about being sexually assaulted herself.
Not long after he spoke to Ms. Kelly, Mr. Hegseth abruptly canceled a meeting with Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, scheduled for Thursday.
Senators Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who are both Trump loyalists, have called the allegations against Mr. Hegseth disturbing, even as they say he deserves a chance to tell his side of the story.
“We absolutely cannot have a secretary of defense that gets drunk on a regular basis,” Mr. Cramer told The Washington Post, adding, “I got to know that he’s got that problem licked.”
Mr. Trump has made clear to people close to him that he believes Mr. Hegseth should have been more forthcoming about the problems he would face getting confirmed, according to two people with knowledge of his thinking.
Mr. Trump’s discussions with Mr. DeSantis about being defense secretary included a conversation on Tuesday at a service honoring three Florida sheriff’s deputies who were killed in a car crash.
But the number of people in Mr. Trump’s world who dislike and distrust Mr. DeSantis — and bitterly recall the campaign he ran against the president-elect — is vast. Those people are discussing other options, including whether Mr. Waltz could slide into the job.
While criticizing Mr. Trump in the past is not always an obstacle for his appointees, Mr. DeSantis threw aggressive jabs at him during the primary. They included a flip line about paying money to a porn star, which was the basis for an indictment against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has spent little if any personal capital with senators trying to push Mr. Hegseth through. And the president-elect’s advisers are mindful in private discussions that Republican senators are trying to be respectful of Mr. Trump while not approving of a selection who concerns them.
Mr. Hegseth, 44, could become the third Trump pick to step aside after Matt Gaetz withdrew his name for attorney general and Sheriff Chad Chronister pulled out of consideration to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration.
In the past two weeks, Mr. Hegseth has come under intense scrutiny. It was revealed that he had entered into a settlement agreement with a woman who accused him of rape in 2017. He insisted it was a consensual encounter, and Mr. Trump told aides at the time that he wanted to stick with Mr. Hegseth.
But the troublesome headlines, which Mr. Trump hates, only grew worse. The New York Times reported on the email his mother wrote him in 2018 as he was going through an acrimonious divorce, in which she told her son he had “abused” a number of women “in some way” over the years.
Mr. Trump has told people he was unhappy with the story about the email.
Mr. Hegseth was also the subject of a damning article in The New Yorker, which reported that he had been forced out as the head of two veterans’ groups because of his behavior. NBC News reported on Tuesday that Mr. Hegseth’s drinking worried his colleagues at Fox News.
It was unclear how extensive the vetting into Mr. Hegseth’s past was by Mr. Trump’s transition team.
The Trump team was watching closely how Mr. Hegseth and his mother performed in the interviews, knowing they were critical for Mr. Trump in deciding whether to stick with his selection, a former Fox News host and combat veteran whose qualifications to lead the Pentagon have come into question.
The perception from people close to Mr. Hegseth was that if he wanted to save himself, he needed to perform well. The Trump team is particularly worried about female Republican senators breaking with Mr. Hegseth, especially Ms. Ernst.
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