What his own family said about him
You are an abuser of women… that is the ugly truth.
His mother, Penelope Hegseth, in a 2018 email · reported by The New York Times
She wrote it during his second divorce, saying he "belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego." She later said she wrote it in anger and disavowed it, calling him "a good father and husband." He has been married three times, married a Fox colleague who had his child while he was still married to someone else, and in 2017 paid a settlement to a woman who reported to police that he had sexually assaulted her, which he denies.
Sources: Scripps News · MS NOW
The drinking he promised to stop
There won't be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I'm doing it.
At his confirmation hearing · January 2025
He made the pledge in answer to reporting he called false. NBC News quoted ten current and former Fox colleagues worried about his drinking, some saying he came to the studio hungover; The New Yorker cited a whistleblower report that he was "repeatedly intoxicated" running a veterans' charity, once carried out of an event, and that he was pushed out of two veterans nonprofits. Asked whether he would resign if he drank again as Secretary of Defense, he would not say yes.
Sources: The Hill