Maggie HabermanJonathan Swan and Michael D. Shear
Pete Hegseth launched a public campaign on Wednesday to shore up faltering support for his selection as defense secretary, saying in a high-profile interview that President-elect Donald J. Trump told him: “I got your back. It’s a fight. They’re coming after you.”
But even as Mr. Hegseth insisted that Mr. Trump was urging him to fight, the president-elect appeared to be having serious conversations about picking Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and his onetime primary rival, to be the defense secretary instead.
Mr. Trump has told people close to him that he likes the idea of giving Mr. DeSantis the job, saying it would be a “big story” if he resurrected Mr. DeSantis after defeating him. The president-elect has also praised Mr. DeSantis’s ability to run the state of Florida, where Mr. Trump lives, and has mentioned that he is “a Navy guy.”
Mr. Trump has privately mentioned Michael Waltz, the Florida congressman he picked as his national security adviser, as another option, pointing out that he would be easily confirmed by the Senate. But people close to Mr. Trump believe that Mr. DeSantis is his favored alternative at this moment if he decides to abandon Mr. Hegseth.
Speaking with Megyn Kelly of SiriusXM radio, Mr. Hegseth dismissed allegations of rape, sexual assault, financial mismanagement and drunken behavior as nothing but a fiction created by Mr. Trump’s enemies. He compared it to accusations leveled against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
“It is the classic art of the smear,” Mr. Hegseth said. “Take whatever tiny kernels of truth — and there are tiny, tiny ones in there — and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I am definitely not.”
He later told Ms. Kelly that if he was confirmed, he would not have “a drop of alcohol” during the time he serves as defense secretary.
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