Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s embattled choice for secretary of defense, defiantly vowed on Thursday to earn the votes necessary for confirmation, seeking to allay Republican concerns over his fitness for the job and persuade Mr. Trump to stick with him.
G.O.P. support for Mr. Hegseth’s bid stalled this week as new allegations emerged detailing incidents of public drunkenness, workplace sexual improprieties and mismanagement of the veterans nonprofits he ran. Those came on top of the revelation that Mr. Hegseth had paid a legal settlement to a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her at a conference in 2017.
Key Republican senators said the reports raised serious concerns while others were notably noncommittal, signaling that Mr. Hegseth might lack the votes to be confirmed, and Mr. Trump has weighed dumping him altogether.
But Mr. Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox News host, has mounted an all-out effort to recover, meeting behind closed doors with key senators, bringing his wife to Capitol Hill to burnish his image, promising that he would quit drinking if confirmed as the secretary of defense and pitching himself as a changed person.
“I’m a different man than I was years ago — that’s a redemption story that I think a lot of Americans appreciate,” Mr. Hegseth said on Thursday at the end of a day of private meetings with senators. “As long as Donald Trump wants me here in this fight, I’m going to be standing here in this fight.”
It was not clear how long that might be. In the immediate aftermath of the new allegations, Mr. Trump considered jettisoning Mr. Hegseth and replacing him with another high-profile veteran, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. But Mr. Hegseth’s aggressive efforts to repair his reputation this week appear to have bought him time to salvage his chances with the president-elect.
In addition to keeping his wife by his side, Mr. Hegseth dispatched his mother, who in 2018 accused him via email of being abusive toward women, to Fox News to vouch for his character. He has also stated frequently that Christianity motivated him to clean up his act.
And on Thursday, he showed the kind of combativeness and hostility toward the media that Mr. Trump prizes. He chided reporters for asking about the allegations against him while suggesting that some of the accusations, detailed in a whistle-blower report about his tenure at the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America, were fabricated by a “disgruntled employee.”
“I will answer all of these senators’ questions, but this will not be a process tried in the media,” he told reporters. “I don’t answer to anyone in this group.”
Mr. Hegseth is still battling to win over enough Republicans to assure his confirmation, and several potentially pivotal senators have signaled reluctance. Chief among them is Senator Joni Ernst, a combat veteran and survivor of sexual assault who met with him on Wednesday for nearly an hour and emerged unconvinced about backing him.
“I do appreciate his service to the nation,” Ms. Ernst told Fox News, adding: “we had a very frank and productive discussion, and I know that we will continue to have conversations in the upcoming months.”
When the Fox News host Bill Hemmer noted it did not seem like she had “come to a ‘yes,’” on Mr. Hegseth, Ms. Ernst agreed.
“You are right,” Ms. Ernst said. “For a number of our senators, they want to make sure that any allegations are cleared, and that’s why we have to have a very thorough vetting process.”
Ms. Ernst’s experience as a survivor of sexual assault and as the Senate’s first female combat veteran poses a dual challenge for Mr. Hegseth, who has been accused of multiple incidents of sexual impropriety and assault, and stated publicly he does not believe women should serve in combat roles.
But several G.O.P. senators are trying to help Mr. Hegseth sidestep the severity of the allegations by dismissing them as irrelevant because they are anonymous, as sexual assault and harassment allegations often are.
“If these people want to go accuse people of something, they ought to go on television,” Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and close ally of Mr. Trump’s who only a day earlier said the reports about Mr. Hegseth were extremely serious, suggested on Thursday that they could be overlooked.
“Allegations that are anonymous don’t count,” Mr. Graham said on Fox News. On Wednesday, he called the reports about Mr. Hegseth’s conduct “very disturbing” and said they would be “difficult” to explain away.
Mr. Hegseth still has to win over at least a handful of other G.O.P. senators who have quietly signaled skepticism about his bid since the allegations came to light. He is expected to sit down next week with Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who has stated that the charges of impropriety against Mr. Hegseth are exactly why cabinet picks ought to be subjected to F.B.I. background checks.
Mr. Hegseth is also scheduled to meet with Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, in the days ahead.
In public, he has used his on-camera appearances to thank Mr. Trump, talk tough about government bureaucracy and disparage the media.
“No more social justice, politically correct approaches to how we fight and conduct wars,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters on Thursday. “This is about lethality, meritocracy, readiness, warfighting and accountability, and I’m grateful that President Trump has bestowed this opportunity on me.”
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