Facebook · IMDB

Actor

1980-06-06 · Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S · Male

6 series in the catalog

Peter Brian Hegseth (born June 6, 1980) is an American government official, veteran, and former television personality who has been serving as the 29th United States secretary of defense since 2025.

Hegseth studied politics at Princeton University, where he was the publisher of The Princeton Tory, a conservative student newspaper. In 2003, he was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Minnesota Army National Guard, serving at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hegseth worked for several organizations after leaving Iraq, including as an executive director at Vets For Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. He became a contributor to Fox News in 2014. Hegseth served as an advisor to President Donald Trump after supporting his campaign in 2016. From 2017 to 2024, Hegseth co-hosted Fox & Friends Weekend. He has written several books, including American Crusade (2020) and The War on Warriors (2024).

In November 2024, then-President-elect Trump named Hegseth as his nominee for secretary of defense. In a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing days before Trump's second inauguration, Hegseth faced allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and excessive drinking. Hegseth was confirmed by the Senate that month, with the vice president, JD Vance, casting a tie-breaking vote. It was only the second time in U.S. history that a Cabinet nominee's confirmation was decided by a vice president, following Betsy DeVos during the first Trump administration in 2017. Hegseth is the second-youngest secretary of defense after Donald Rumsfeld, who first occupied the position in the Ford administration.

Hegseth has drawn criticism during his tenure as secretary of defense for a variety of actions such as the fallout from a leaked government group chat on Signal; alleged war crimes related to U.S. military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea; promoting Christianity inside the military; using unmarked military planes for boat strikes; the use of force and rules of engagement in the 2026 Iran war; and a military mandate for testosterone screening. Conversely, Hegseth has received praise from Republican politicians, right-wing political commentators, and Christian nationalist organizations for his role as defense secretary.

Early life and education

Peter Brian Hegseth was born on June 6, 1980, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is of Norwegian descent, as his great-grandparents migrated from Norway to Minnesota before they had children. He was the first of three children of Brian Hegseth and Penelope Haugen. Hegseth's father was a basketball coach for high schools across Minnesota before retiring in 2019. Hegseth's mother is an executive business coach who has taught with the Minnesota Excellence in Public Service (MEPS) Series, a fellowship and leadership program for Republican and center-right women. Hegseth was raised in Forest Lake, Minnesota, and attended Forest Lake Area High School. He graduated on June 10, 1999 as valedictorian. Hegseth played on his high school's football team and was a point guard on the basketball team, where he set school records for career three-point shots, single-season three-point shots, and single-season three-point shooting percentage. He was named all-conference twice and earned all-state honors as a senior.

After high school, Hegseth enrolled at Princeton University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 2003. According to Reserve & National Guard Magazine, he chose Princeton over an offer from the United States Military Academy to play for the school's basketball team. Months before the September 11 attacks, Hegseth joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. During his years at Princeton, Hegseth was the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Princeton Tory, the school's conservative student newspaper.

In April 2002, Hegseth declared that, as publisher of The Princeton Tory, he would "defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity". The editors of The Princeton Tory criticized Halle Berry for accepting the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball (2001) "on behalf of an entire race", and The New York Times for announcing that it would print gay marriage announcements, arguing that it would justify publishing marriage announcements for incestuous, zoophilic, and pedophilic relationships. In October, The Princeton Tory published an editorial calling homosexuality immoral. In response, the president of Princeton's student government, Nina Langsam, wrote a strongly worded email to Hegseth and The Princeton Tory's publisher, Brad Simmons. Her email was published in the following issue.

Career

Military service (2003–2006, 2010–2014, 2019–2021)

After graduating from Princeton in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army through the university's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. He briefly worked as an equity-markets analyst at Bear Stearns. Hegseth completed his basic training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, in 2004, and for 11 months he was a Minnesota Army National Guardsman at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. There, he led a platoon of soldiers from the New Jersey Army National Guard guarding detainees. By July 2005, he had returned to Bear Stearns; shortly thereafter, he volunteered in the Iraq War as an infantry officer, where he received a Bronze Star Medal. Hegseth served in the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division, led by Colonel Michael D. Steele. He began his tour in Baghdad before moving to Samarra, where he served as a civil affairs officer, working with the city council and forming an alliance with council member Asaad Ali Yaseen. Hegseth has described a near-death experience in Iraq in which a rocket-propelled grenade hit his vehicle but failed to detonate.

In 2010, Hegseth deployed with the Minnesota Army National Guard as a counterinsurgency instructor. He volunteered to teach at the Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan, for eight months, during the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan; he taught one of the final classes at the school. After completing his tour in 2014, he was promoted to major and assigned to the Individual Ready Reserve. Through the reserve, he joined the District of Columbia Army National Guard in June 2019 as a traditional drilling service member, remaining in duty until March 2021. He was barred from serving on duty at the inauguration of Joe Biden after a guardsman flagged Hegseth as an "insider threat", noting a tattoo on his biceps of the words Deus vult. He left the Individual Ready Reserve in January 2024, writing in his book The War on Warriors (2024) that he resigned over the incident.

Political activism (2006–2016)

By August 2006, Hegseth moved to Manhattan and began working at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where he met a marine who was working for Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy organization. He began working for Vets for Freedom in 2006 as an unpaid director; by 2007, he was working full-time as an executive director, and by 2008, he became the organization's president. In May 2007, Hegseth appeared at a presidential campaign fundraiser for John McCain. In the months leading up to the 2008 United States presidential election, Vets for Freedom began supporting McCain. As the group's chairman, he criticized Democratic nominee Barack Obama for supporting "a dangerous policy of irreversible withdrawal." By January 2009, Vets for Freedom had accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, leading to an internal campaign to oust Hegseth. The group merged with Military Families United, and he was removed from leadership by 2011.

After returning to Minnesota in February 2012, Hegseth decided to enter the Republican primary for the United States Senate election in Minnesota and had selected a…