5 things to know about Minnesotan Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary

As President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration comes into clearer focus, one newly announced Cabinet pick may ring a bell for several Minnesotans. Trump has tapped “Fox and Friends” host Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense.

While he’s known to most of America as a Fox News personality, here are five things we learned from the Minnesota Star Tribune archives and other media reports about Hegseth:

Hegseth graduated from Forest Lake Area High School in 1999, where he played football and basketball and set the school’s all-time scoring record and single-season record for three-pointers. He went on to attend Princeton University on an ROTC scholarship, where he continued playing basketball as a guard.

Hegseth described himself as a “slow 6-footer,” according to a Star Tribune dispatch from 2001. In 2010, his younger brother, Phil, became captain of the Forest Lake Area High basketball team.

Hegseth joined the Minnesota Army National Guard three days after he started at Bear Sterns — and two weeks after he graduated from Princeton — and served with the 101st Airborne in 2005-06, according to the Star Tribune archives. In 2005, the then-lieutenant spoke to the newspaper about the conditions of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, where he defended the facility against criticism.

“Photographers sometimes take pictures that make it look like American soldiers are putting the detainees in dog cages,” he told Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten. “That’s very misleading.”

A year before that, three British Muslim prisoners had reported several instances of torture, forced drugging and religious persecution.

Hegseth was the founder and longtime executive director of Vets for Freedom, a group that advocates for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2008, the Star Tribune reported that Forest Lake Area High School withdrew from an event organized by Hegseth over concerns that it would be overly political and the potential for protests.

Forest Lake High described the event as an academic classroom discussion about military service.

However, the organization’s website stated that the National Heroes Tour was about “rallying the country to complete the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.” When a Star Tribune reporter asked Hegseth if that line could be construed as political, he said the group would agree not to promote the “progress made in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The event moved to the American Legion Post 225 in Forest Lake, where more than 100 people showed up. About a dozen students from the high school sat in the front row, the Star Tribune reported at the time.

In 2014, Hegseth decried the Pentagon’s decision to allow women in combat roles during an interview with Fox News’ Megan Kelly.

“It’s another variable that, as a platoon leader or a squad leader, you don’t want to have to deal with ‘Matt’s’ feelings toward ‘Mary,’” he said.

In 2012, Hegseth mounted a bid for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. At 31, he was one year past the age requirement to run for the office. Then the executive director of the political advocacy organization Vets For Freedom, Hegseth tossed his hat in the ring to challenge U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who had just wrapped up “five controversey-free years” in Washington, per a Star Tribune report at the time.

Hegseth’s supporters urged him to run by mounting a “draft Pete” campaign on social media. While relatively unknown in Minnesota at the time, Hegseth had a burgeoning national profile due to his work as a fellow at the Center For The American Experiment. He raised $160,000 in the first month of his campaign.

“We understand the uphill battle,” Hegseth told a Star Tribune reporter. “We understand she’s perceived well. We understand she’s got a lot of money, and that a lot of other candidates have decided to hold off and not run against her. But I’ve never been afraid of long odds, I’ve never been afraid of the David-vs.-Goliath scenario.”

He withdrew from the race just after the party convention in May. The party’s eventual nominee, Kurt Bills, lost to Klobuchar that November.

Hegseth’s name also came up during the gubernatorial race six years later.

“We certainly need to win that race in 2018, and I’m honored and humbled to be mentioned,” Hegseth said.

Back in 2019, Hegseth went viral for claiming he hadn’t washed his hands in 10 years because he didn’t believe germs existed. His “Fox and Friends” co-hosts had just given him a hard time about eating day-old pizza on set. That’s when Hegseth said his New Year’s resolution was to say things on-camera that he usually reserved for backstage.

“Germs are not a real thing,” Hegseth said. “I can’t see them. Therefore, they’re not real.”

He later revealed that he was joking.