Just last week, Pete Hegseth was twisting in the wind.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon was battered by damaging headlines: Drinking. Extramarital affairs. An allegation of sexual assault, which he denied.
Republican senators — emboldened after tanking Mr. Trump’s first choice for attorney general, the scandal-ridden Matt Gaetz — were going public with their concerns. Mr. Trump was getting sick of hearing about it all, and he told confidants he was serious about picking Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to replace him.
But within 48 hours,Mr. Trump had changed his mind. He was going to see if Mr. Hegseth could survive.
People close to the president-elect had been telling him that this was a moment that would test his power as he prepared to return to Washington. It would be catastrophic, they argued, if he allowed Republican senators, like Joni Ernst of Iowa, to obstruct his mandate.
This was about something more than Mr. Hegseth, they said.
The sequence that followed — resuscitating Mr. Hegseth in less than a week from dead man walking to a man with a real shot of being confirmed by the Senate — was a test case of power and intimidation in the Trump era.
It was a reminder of Mr. Trump’s ability to summon an online swarm, even while spending minimal personal capital of his own. It showed that he has at his disposal a powerful movement, which jumped into action once his desires became clear. And it highlighted the role of Elon Musk, who has bottomless wealth to enforce Mr. Trump’s desires.
This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen people who have direct knowledge of how and why Mr. Trump salvaged Mr. Hegseth’s bid, at least for now. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a confidential process with the president-elect.
Signals to the MAGA Base
Mr. Hegseth spent Wednesday, Dec. 4, just trying to stay in the running. Mr. Trump, in a private phone call that morning, gave his blessing for Mr. Hegseth to go out and fight for the job. But he had not yet decided to throw his own support behind him publicly.
Mr. Hegseth did an interview with Megyn Kelly of SiriusXM radio and said he was being smeared. His mother appeared on “Fox & Friends” to renounce a devastating 2018 email that described him as an “abuser” of women. Mr. Trump had been deeply bothered in particular by a New York Times story detailing that email, people close to him said.
Mr. Hegseth’s appearances were intended as much for Mr. Trump’s consumption as signals to the MAGA base that he would not quit, as Mr. Gaetz had done.
Mr. Trump’s followers were ready to launch into the same defend-and-attack mode that they used during the 2018 fight to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court after he had been accused of sexual assault.
But that was not possible until Mr. Trump made his intentions clear.
Mr. Hegseth had been getting nervous, particularly after reading the reports about Mr. DeSantis. He felt as though he was effectively under a gag order; people on the transition team had told him to stay away from the news media, a traditional approach in Washington confirmation battles. Mr. Trump’s private blessing to go out and fight was all he needed.
By Thursday morning, Mr. Trump made his decision known to his inner circle: He was sticking with Mr. Hegseth.
His advisers had convinced him, after several days of gentle pressure, that abandoning Mr. Hegseth would only empower skeptical Republicans. But that was not the only reason. Mr. Trump also struggled to find anyone open to the prospect of Mr. DeSantis, who has had difficult relationships, at best, with several Trump aides and allies.
On Friday morning, Mr. Trump gave his first public show of support for Mr. Hegseth, saying on social media that he would be “fantastic” and that he has a “military state of mind.”
The pressure campaign was on.
‘Full Steam Ahead’
Vice President-elect JD Vance reached out to G.O.P. senators and major figures in the broader MAGA movement, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations.
His message to his Senate colleagues was clear: I understand your concerns, but the president is not giving up on this nominee. He wants to fight.
The campaign to revive Mr. Hegseth’s nomination was led internally by Mr. Vance and orchestrated externally by a small group of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive allies.
The group included his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and MAGA media figures who are seen as most effective at quickly whipping up the base, chief among them Stephen K. Bannon; the radio host Charlie Kirk; and the Breitbart reporter Matt Boyle. A key behind-the-scenes operator in the pressure campaign has been Arthur Schwartz, who has been serving as Mr. Hegseth’s media adviser and who is a close ally of Mr. Vance and Donald Trump Jr.
Early Friday morning, Mr. Bannon called Mr. Vance to ask him if Trump allies were fighting for Mr. Hegseth, according to two people briefed on the call.
Mr. Vance’s reply: “Full steam ahead.”
Mr. Hegseth relied on his own group of close allies to help navigate the media torrent and the Senate meetings as he made the rounds on Capitol Hill with his wife, Jennifer, by his side. The group included his brother, Phil; his Senate sherpa, Eric Ueland; and two former officials who worked with Mr. Hegseth at the group Concerned Veterans for America, Sean Parnell and Dan Caldwell. Fox News personalities also came out in defense of their former colleague, some even speaking privately to Mr. Trump last week to reassure him about allegations related to drinking.
But it was the hard-line base strategy that the Trump team considered most crucial.
Influential MAGA figures like Mr. Kirk quickly turned their audiences against the Republican senators believed to be the biggest obstacles. They threatened to recruit a primary challenger against Ms. Ernst in 2026. They sent threatening posts on social media, and on their radio shows they urged their listeners to pressure Ms. Ernst and to call her congressional office. Some online users scraped up information ostensibly from her divorce and made it public.
Mike Davis, a close ally of Mr. Trump who leads the conservative group the Article III Project, joined the online chorus. Kevin Roberts, who leads the Heritage Foundation, approved ad spending in support of Mr. Hegseth.
Brenna Bird, the popular attorney general of Iowa, wrote an opinion column in Breitbart News saying that Washington politicians were trying to obstruct Mr. Trump’s administration. Ms. Bird did not mention Ms. Ernst by name, but her message was unmistakable.
And a dark-money conservative group that Mr. Musk has used for political spending ran digital ads in Iowa calling on people to urge Ms. Ernst to vote for Mr. Hegseth.
The cowing effect reveals how intensely worried Republican senators are about getting on the wrong side of Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement. The arc of their public comments charts their apparent capitulation.
Last week, the allegations against Mr. Hegseth were “very disturbing,” in the words of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Yet soon after that declaration, Mr. Graham said that “anonymous” statements against Mr. Hegseth were invalid.
Ms. Ernst’s turnaround was even more striking. Mr. Hegseth had seemed almost tailor-made to earn her opposition. She is the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate; he has said women should not be allowed to serve in combat. She is a survivor of sexual assault; he has been accused of it — an allegation he denies.
A week ago, Ms. Ernst seemed as if she would not be able to get to yes on Mr. Hegseth. She said he would “have his work cut out for him.” But after a few days of intense pressure, her comments this week could not have been more different.
“As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources,” Ms. Ernst said in a statement on Monday after a meeting with Mr. Hegseth, echoing Mr. Graham.
Mr. Hegseth is not out of the woods by any means. If all Democratic senators vote against him, he can lose no more than three Republicans during his confirmation vote. On Wednesday, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said she had privately questioned Mr. Hegseth on both policy issues and the misconduct allegations against him but would not decide whether to back him until after a thorough vetting. And people involved in the process are nervous about the possibility of additional allegations coming to light before his confirmation hearing.
Still, Mr. Bannon, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist and remains a close ally, has argued that staying in the fight has its own value. Mr. Bannon had argued that it was a mistake to withdraw Mr. Gaetz’s candidacy. If nothing else, he said, Mr. Gaetz served as a heat shield to distract the media and allow other divisive candidates to slip through, such as Mr. Trump’s choice for F.B.I. director, Kash Patel.
“A guy like Gaetz performs a critical function — drawing fire, meaning attention, from all other candidates,” Mr. Bannon said in a text message to The New York Times. “It is critical to ‘flood the zone’ strategy to never withdraw, never retreat, double down, and overwhelm the system. That leads to victory.”
Mr. Trump’s allies say they have learned their lesson: no more Gaetzes, no more easy concessions to squeamish Republicans.
Whether Mr. Hegseth is ultimately confirmed or not, the past week is already seen as a resounding success by people close to Mr. Trump. It is their first test run of a blunt-force pressure strategy that will be replicated again and again, whenever a Republican gets in the way of Mr. Trump.
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