President-elect Donald Trump is considering replacing Pete Hegseth, his controversial pick to lead the Pentagon, with one-time 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, people familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday.
The move comes as Hegseth, a 44-year-old Army veteran and former Fox News personality, faces increasing scrutiny over allegations of sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement.
The defense secretary post requires Senate confirmation and Hegseth faces an increasingly uphill battle to win over GOP members with concerns about his past.
As many as six Senate Republicans have expressed reservations about confirming Hegseth for the top Pentagon role, according to NBC News.
DeSantis, a former Navy Judge Advocate General, was on a short-list of potential defense secretary candidates presented to Trump by transition officials before he went with Hegseth, according to the Journal.
The list has recently been dusted off and presented to Trump again as allegations about Hegseth, which some senators have described as “disturbing,” continue to surface.
Sources that spoke to the Journal cautioned that Trump, 78, could settle on a different replacement for Hegseth should his nomination fail.
The idea of being nominated as defense secretary, however, has been presented to DeSantis, 46, in recent days, according to the outlet.
The president-elect and the Florida governor were together Tuesday at a memorial service of slain police officers in Palm Beach County, Fla.
Like Hegseth and Trump, DeSantis has been a vocal critic of “woke” Pentagon policies.
During his presidential primary campaign, DeSantis proposed eliminating Pentagon diversity initiatives and slashing military programs focused on climate change.
“Our mantra on Jan. 20, 2025, as commander in chief will be very simple: mission first, accomplish the mission,” DeSantis said on the campaign trail in South Carolina last year, blaming “wokeism” for a drop in military recruitment.
“We also have to ensure that there’s good order and discipline on military installations,” the Sunshine State governor added. “Having things like drag shows on military bases should not be allowed.”
DeSantis also indicated that as president he would revoke a Biden-Harris administration policy that allows transgender service members to serve in the military under their preferred sex and reinstate personnel who were forced out for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, Hegseth has been on Capitol Hill this week drumming up support for his nomination, meeting with several GOP senators and discussing his vision for the Pentagon.
Days after being tapped to serve as defense secretary, reports surfaced that Hegseth faced a 2017 sexual assault allegation out of Monterey County, Calif.
Hegseth was never charged and his lawyer claims the allegations were “false.”
Earlier this week, the New Yorker detailed more startling allegations made against Trump’s pick, by former employees at Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America, nonprofit veterans’ advocacy groups led by Hegseth between 2007 and 2016.
Two former employees, emails and a 2015 whistleblower dossier indicated that Hegseth was asked to step down from the organizations because he got “totally sloshed” at events and looked the other way when male members of his senior management sexually harassed female associates, according to the outlet.
The former Fox News host purportedly got so intoxicated during a November 2014 visit to a Louisiana strip club that he “tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers” — and a female colleague “had to get him off” before security guards kicked them out.
The report also claimed that Hegseth got drunk on a CVA tour of Ohio in May 2015 and began shouting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”
An email allegedly sent to Hegseth’s successor at CVA, obtained by the New Yorker, described the Pentagon pick as treating the “organization funds like they were a personal expense account — for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the road.”
The Post has reached out to DeSantis and the Trump transition team for comment.
