‘Your Sto­ry Is Horse­sh**’: Hegseth’s Col­leagues Fierce­ly Defend Him After NBC News Attack

Posted in Election 2024  •  Published by

After NBC News report­ed that anony­mous  col­leagues of Pete Hegseth, Pres­i­dent-elect Trump’s choice for Sec­re­tary of Defense, was drunk while on air, pro­fes­sion­al col­leagues of Hegseth ripped NBC and fierce­ly defend­ed Hegseth.

NBC News report­ed:

Pete Hegseth, Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s pick for defense sec­re­tary, drank in ways that con­cerned his col­leagues at Fox News, accord­ing to 10 cur­rent and for­mer Fox employ­ees who spoke with NBC News. Two of those peo­ple said that on more than a dozen occa­sions dur­ing Hegseth’s time as a co-host of “Fox & Friends Week­end,” which began in 2017, they smelled alco­hol on him before he went on air. Those same two peo­ple, plus anoth­er, said that dur­ing his time there he appeared on tele­vi­sion after they’d heard him talk about being hun­gover as he was get­ting ready or on set. 

Unlike the anony­mous col­leagues cit­ed in the report, sev­er­al peo­ple who work with Hegseth reg­u­lar­ly went on the record to defend him from the attack.

CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Dan Bongi­no: “Worked with Pete for years. This is absolute BULLS***

Fox News’ Will Cain, co-host of Fox & Friends Week­end: “Your sto­ry is horse*** @NBCNews. Put my name on it. On the record. It’ll be your only on the record source. Signed, The guy who sat next to him for 8 hours every week for five years start­ing at 6 am.”

Cain also pro­vid­ed a place for those who had worked with Hegseth to denounce the accu­sa­tion:

Clay Travis of Out­kick: “Add me to the list. It’s ridicu­lous bulls***.”

Travis con­tin­ued, “I’ll say it again as I’ve said it for years: anony­mous quotes where peo­ple rip on oth­er peo­ple shouldn’t be part of any ‘jour­nal­ism.’ It’s total bulls***. If you aren’t man or woman enough to put your actu­al name behind your crit­i­cism then it shouldn’t be pub­lished. Peri­od.”

Travis added, “And for the record, hav­ing done ear­ly morn­ing media for years, there’s no way any­one with actu­al alco­hol issues can do ear­ly morn­ing TV or radio for years and nev­er miss shows. Of all the media jobs, ear­ly morn­ing is BY FAR the least for­giv­ing and most demand­ing.”

Rachel Cam­pos-Duffy, co-host of Fox & Friends Week­end: “The losers at @NBCNews nev­er reached out to me either. @willcain is right – your sto­ry IS  hors­es***. You now have 2 peo­ple who sat next to him 8+ hours a week on the record. Will you retract or cor­rect your sto­ry?”

Fox News’ con­trib­u­tor Lisa Boothe: “I’ve guest co-host­ed with him numer­ous times before. Not once did this hap­pen. Not once have I heard this from oth­ers. This is such a dis­gust­ing and false smear. It is wrong and mali­cious.”

For­mer Fox News pro­duc­er Bre­an­na Morel­lo: “As a for­mer Fox pro­duc­er, I’ve nev­er heard this in my life. Every­one spoke high­ly of him and still does til this day. I noticed the employ­ees are anony­mous.”

Anoth­er attack on Hegseth on Sun­day came from The New York­er in a piece titled “Pete Hegseth’s Secret His­to­ry.” The piece quot­ed “a pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed whis­tle-blow­er report” that accused Hegseth, as The New York­er report­ed, of “being repeat­ed­ly intox­i­cat­ed while act­ing in his offi­cial capac­i­ty” as the pres­i­dent of Con­cerned Vet­er­ans for Amer­i­ca between 2013 and 2016.

The New York­er report­ed, “In response to ques­tions from this mag­a­zine, Tim Par­la­tore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the fol­low­ing state­ment, which he said came from ‘an advi­sor’ to Hegseth: ‘We’re not going to com­ment on out­landish claims laun­dered through The New York­er by a pet­ty and jeal­ous dis­grun­tled for­mer asso­ciate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actu­al jour­nal­ism.’”

The NBC piece has not been updat­ed with the on the record com­ments from col­leagues on Hegseth.