Trump Supporters Go All In for Pete Hegseth With Money and Coordination
Conservative organizations are targeting Republican senators, saying that they will pay a price if they do not back the president-elect’s choice for defense secretary.
As Pete Hegseth prepares for confirmation hearings, a coalition of outside groups is pressuring Republican senators to confirm him as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s secretary of defense — or face daunting political fallout it they do not.
Mr. Hegseth, a military veteran and former television anchor, has been grappling with a variety of damaging accusations — including bouts of heavy drinking, financial mismanagement and sexual assault — that critics are using to question his fitness for the post. At the same time, he has also been dogged by concerns that he lacks the management experience needed to manage a Defense Department with a budget of more than $800 billion and nearly three million employees.
Mr. Trump has so far stood by Mr. Hegseth, encouraging him to fight the allegations over his past conduct. Mr. Hegseth has denied that he committed sexual assault, saying the encounter with the complainant in 2017, was consensual. He said he was a victim of a smear campaign. A phalanx of well-financed groups that back Mr. Trump and his cabinet picks, including popular podcasters and political advocacy groups, say Mr. Hegseth is the right person for the job and have helped make his political survival a cause célèbre.
Some of those efforts are being coordinated with senior advisers to Mr. Trump, according to several people who are involved and who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss strategy.
A Trump transition official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The concerted push is a sharp departure from Mr. Trump’s first administration, when his outside supporters’ efforts were often scattershot and underfunded.
This time around, backers of Mr. Trump and his agenda are “pretty coordinated,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump White House adviser whose podcast, “War Room,” has talked up Mr. Hegseth and other cabinet picks.
“We know that one of the mistakes from the first time around was that we didn’t really have any outside groups, and the ones that were around weren’t really on board with the Trump agenda,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview. “This time, it’s more sophisticated, it’s got more money, it’s got a whole media and influencer ecosystem, and it started earlier, because a lot of it came out of the campaign.”
Outside groups are promoting Mr. Hegseth in myriad ways.
Officials from a conservative advocacy group called Article III Project have appeared on television and on podcasts, including Mr. Bannon’s, to encourage listeners to use their website to contact senators in support of Mr. Hegseth. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and a linked advocacy group, are spending $1 million on ads and other efforts supporting the potential defense secretary and other Trump nominees.
Building America’s Future, a nonprofit group that spent $45 million supporting Mr. Trump’s campaign directly and through allied super PACs, has aired more than $500,000 in ads on Fox News and elsewhere, saying Mr. Hegseth is the victim of a “deep state” campaign to sink his nomination.
And on Tuesday, just before Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, a group of Navy SEALs and other veterans plan to rally in support of Mr. Hegseth at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington — an effort promoted by Mr. Bannon.
Mr. Hegseth is not the only cabinet pick of Mr. Trump’s to face questions about his past behavior. Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s choice for F.B.I. director, was accused by a former defense secretary of endangering the rescue in 2020 of a kidnapped American citizen in Africa by fabricating information. Tulsi Gabbard, the presumed nominee for director of national intelligence, expressed sympathy for Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, a U.S. ally, and in 2017 visited Syria’s authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad, when she was serving in Congress.
But the closest Trump-era parallel to Mr. Hegseth’s case may be the confirmation process in 2018 for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who contended with claims of sexual assault and excessive alcohol consumption in his high school and college years. Mr. Kavanaugh, who was nominated by Mr. Trump, denied those accusations during a fractious Senate committee hearing. A brief follow-up investigation by the F.B.I. appeared not to support them, and he was quickly confirmed by the Senate by two votes.
Now, six years and one electoral comeback for Mr. Trump later, supporters of the president-elect’s agenda believe they can be much more aggressive in supporting his cabinet choices and agenda.
“Our job is to represent the grass-roots MAGA movement and help Republican senators find and keep their backbones,” said Mike Davis, the founder and president of Article III Project and a former chief counsel for nominations to the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Kavanaugh confirmation.
In November, Mr. Davis wrote on X of Mr. Trump’s past legal and political opponents that he wanted “to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”
The groups bolstering Mr. Hegseth and other cabinet picks are deeper-pocketed and better connected to the president-elect than last time around.
“I think they are playing hardball, in a much more focused, targeted and calculated way,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat and longtime member of the Judiciary Committee. “You know, they’ve learned from experience.”
He added, “That’s putting a lot of pressure on my Republican colleagues.”
Building America’s Future has named Chris LaCivita, who helped run Mr. Trump’s campaign, and Tony Fabrizio, the campaign’s top pollster, as advisers; it has also taken in contributions from the billionaire Elon Musk, whom Mr. Trump has named to lead a new enterprise focused on slashing government spending. Mr. Davis, who was briefly floated as an attorney general candidate, is in regular touch with Mr. Trump and is preparing several of his cabinet nominees for Senate hearings.
Charlie Kirk, the founder of the grass-roots youth organization Turning Point USA, is also in regular contact with Mr. Trump’s inner circle as well as key Republican senators whose “no” votes could sink a Hegseth confirmation — a fact he has used to pressure them into supporting the potential nominee.
A super PAC called American Leadership PAC last week launched a $1 million advertising campaign calling on residents of five states to urge their senators to back Mr. Hegseth, according to a person familiar with it who requested anonymity and was not authorized to disclose financial details. The super PAC, which bills itself as “anti-woke,” is airing a television ad predicting Mr. Hegseth will “ban woke nonsense from our armed forces,” and “make our military great again.”
The bare-knuckled approach appears to be gaining traction.
Last month, as Mr. Hegseth’s prospects for confirmation appeared to be dimming, Mr. Trump’s supporters targeted Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican and combat veteran who serves on the Armed Services Committee that will hold the confirmation hearings. Ms. Ernst initially seemed unconvinced that Mr. Hegseth should lead the Pentagon. But under intensifying pressure — including a digital ad buy from Building America’s Future and a threat of a primary challenge in 2026 backed by Mr. Kirk — she signaled that she would be receptive to supporting the nomination.
Article III Project officials say Republican senators are pleading with them to make the phones stop ringing after an initiative in support of Mr. Hegseth that generated nearly 31,000 calls, emails and social-media posts. (Similar efforts for Mr. Patel and Ms. Gabbard have also yielded thousands of incoming messages.)
Mr. Bannon believes the current grass-roots advocacy is only the beginning.
The push for Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation is “a test run for other times that we’re going to have to get people into the streets and into the halls of Congress,” he said.