In August 2021, Pete Hegseth said on Will Cain’s podcast that slowly, surely, “by the grace of God,” he had been able to undo a pattern of alcohol abuse that had dogged him since he returned from military combat in Iraq in 2006.
Asked about his New Year’s resolutions on the same podcast in mid-January 2024, Mr. Hegseth brought up alcohol anew. “The less booze thing is not working out for me,” he said then.
Mr. Hegseth, the former Fox News anchor and combat veteran President-elect Donald J. Trump picked for defense secretary, is likely to be asked to revisit the issue of his alcohol use as part of his Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday.
The New York Times and other news organizations have documented a pattern of excessive drinking by Mr. Hegseth. In the most serious episode, a woman in Monterey, Calif., accused him of raping her in 2017. Mr. Hegseth said the encounter was consensual, and it resulted in no criminal charges. His lawyer said Mr. Hegseth was inebriated at the time.
In an interview on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM show last month, Mr. Hegseth acknowledged concerns about his drinking had put his nomination at risk. He promised then that there “won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips” if he is confirmed.
“I need to make sure the senators and the troops and President Trump and everybody else knows when you call me 24/7 you’re getting fully dialed-in Pete, just like you always did in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said then.
Depending on how he answers the senators’ questions, Mr. Hegseth could come across as sufficiently reformed or lacking the necessary self-discipline for one of the most critical cabinet posts.
Some Democrats have promised to challenge his fitness for the position partly on the basis of his drinking. “A Secretary of Defense must exercise clear judgment and be ready to be called upon at any time, and a Secretary who struggles with excessive and inappropriate drinking undermines our national security,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote in a letter to him dated Jan. 6.
Mr. Hegseth’s pledge to abstain from alcohol echoed that of another nominee for defense secretary, John Tower, who in 1989 said: “If confirmed, I won’t have a drink.” Mr. Tower also promised to resign if he faltered, but it still was not enough to overcome his reputation of being a carouser and the Senate voted him down.
As part of a background check that began last month, F.B.I. agents asked at least some people whether Mr. Hegseth had abused alcohol, but it was unclear as of Monday how thorough that inquiry was.
A review by The Times of Mr. Hegseth’s public statements in recent years found that he often referred to his alcohol consumption, both in describing some dark moments in his life and in light banter about enjoying “an extra pour” or a certain type of liquor.
Mr. Hegseth said in the 2021 podcast episode that he struggled to adjust to civilian life after his deployment in Iraq.
“I’d look around at 10 o’clock and be like, ‘What am I going to do today? How about I drink some beers? ’” he told Mr. Cain. “And one beer leads to many, leads to self-medication, leads to ‘I’ve earned this.’ Like, ‘Don’t tell me I can’t.’”
He said he had been able to “undo that cycle,” but did not specify when.
In 2020 and 2021, Mr. Hegseth repeatedly told a story about getting extremely drunk with a veteran involved in the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden.
“The first time I heard the full story from Rob O’Neill in a bar of the Bin Laden raid I thought I was going to meet him for 45 minutes. Four and a half hours later, I could barely walk and I heard the whole story,” he said on Fox Nation’s “Friday Night Live” in a 2020 episode.
As a weekend anchor for the morning show “Fox & Friends” from 2017 to 2024, Mr. Hegseth and his co-workers frequently joked about his taste for beer, gin and whiskey.
Answering a question about his weight in the 2020 episode on Fox Nation, Mr. Hegseth said that his diet mostly consisted of “protein and booze.” But he also suggested that he was trying to cut down on alcohol. “I put this much soda in and this much gin in, so I’m not really drinking all that much, although I may have many glasses. You know how that goes,” he said.
Three years later, showing up for a “Fox & Friends” episode in a tuxedo from a celebration the evening before, he said, “I partied all night and I’m here and I didn’t change.”
Mr. Hegseth’s treatment of women may also come up. In a 2018 email, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, accused him of mistreating women for years. “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man,” she wrote him.
Mrs. Hegseth later disavowed those sentiments and said she apologized to her son for the email.
In the interview with Ms. Kelly, Mr. Hegseth said with the help of his third wife and his religious faith, “I have become a changed man.”
Emily Steel contributed reporting.
