As a key component of the Trump Regime Media, the Media Research Center worked hard to defend Pete Hegseth over his numerous personal issues regarding his nomination for secretary of defense. Then, the MRC had to enlist Hegseth’s mother in the effort. Rather than ask inconvenient questions about why a man nominated for secretary of defense has to have his mother do a media tour to defend him, Curtis Houck stayed in the approved Trump Regime Media lane with a Dec. 4 post that portrayed her as a victim over the release of an email she doesn’t deny writing:
On Wednesday, Pete Hegseth’s mother Penelope stepped out from private life into the spotlight for a sit-down on Fox & Friends to lay waste to the “almost criminal” liberal media and specifically “discredit” The New York Times for leaking a 2018 e-mail she had written to her son amid his second divorce but quickly regretted.
Speaking to co-host Steve Doocy, Mrs. Hegseth started by stating she’d “do anything for my son” and implored “the senators on the Hill especially our female senators” to listen to “the truth” and “not listen to the media.”
Hegseth said, on the e-mail itself, she said the Pete she was dealing with seven years ago was a far different man than the one he is now.
“[I]f all went back seven years we would — we would see that maybe we were not the people we are today but they were going through, Pete and his wife at the time were going through a very difficult divorce. It was a very emotional time and I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There’s emotions. We say things and I wrote that in haste. I wrote that with deep emotions. I wrote that as a parent,” she said before noting she retracted it hours later.
She then called out the liberal media smear campaign as “dangerous,” “threaten[ing]” and “hard on families”:
Houck didn’t explain how reporting on an email Hegseth’s mother doesn’t dispute the authenticity of is a “smear campaign.” He did admit that Hegseth’s mother “did largely duck questions about whether she’s worried the firestorm will keep Trump from “hit[ting] the ground running” next month, whether she’d testify before Congress if asked, and if she’s done any investigating as to how the e-mail to her son was leaked to The Times.”
In another post that day, Houck hyped a Fox News interview Hegseth himself did with Fox News:
They later closed with The New York Times hit job against Hegesth and his mother and the leak of a 2018 e-mail she sent to him amid his second divorce.
Hegseth and Kelly refused to pretend to be outraged, admitting this is what they do. After crediting The Times for at least speaking to his mother, he admitted it was a difficult time.
Instead of focusing on the redemptive factor, he noted, the liberal media have tried to paint Hegseth as having a tenuous relationship with his mom:
Houck didn’t explain why nobody is allowed to ask why Hegeth’s mother wrote such a harsh email, even if claims to have immediately regretted it. He also didn’t explain how the Times article, whose accuracy neither he nor the Hegseth family disputes, is somehow a “hit job.”
Tim Graham whined about it in his Dec. 4 podcast:
Would you like to imagine The New York Times publishing an email your mother sent you telling you you’re a terrible spouse? That’s what happened to Pete Hegseth, and his mother Penelope. They will use notes that were supposed to be private for their own political gain.
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote to her son in 2018 during his second divorce. Then she said she apologized two hours later, but that doesn’t stop the lefties. She called the Times “despicable.”
She said she felt threatened by the language of the Times, even if this is sort of their modus operandi. They say, “this is what we’re going to publish, so what are you going to say about it?” It can feel like a threat, that we’re publishing this personal email in an attempt to derail your son’s career. Of course that feels threatening to her.
Most Americans would look at this occasion and say at the very least that the media can be very rude when it has a political agenda it wants to win. Their objective is to crumble as many Trump nominations as they can. Even after confirmation, they’ll seek to ruin Cabinet members. That hasn’t happened under Biden.
Graham didn’t want to discuss why the career of a man who treats women so badly that his mother calls him out on it shouldn’t be derailed. But this is the MRC, where Republicans are always victims and Democrats are always the aggressors.
Jorge Bonilla claimed that ABC “stoops to a new low by seemingly mocking Hegseth’s mother’s appearance on Fox & Friends“:
We may have arrived at Mean Girls territory with Mary Bruce’s lingering on Hegseth’s mom. Of course, the purpose of such lingering is to extend the shelf life of the dubiously-sourced email published in The New York Times, notwithstanding its being refuted at every turn by Mrs. Musk among others.
If nobody disputes the authenticity of the email, it’s irrelevant whether it’s “dubiously sourced,” or that Hegseth’s mom has “refuted [it] at every turn.”
Comedy cop Alex Christy tried to defend Hegseth and his mom from those nasty late-night comedians in a Dec. 5 post:
Meanwhile, back over at Comedy Central, The Daily Show’s host of the week, Ronny Chieng, also tried to suggest Penelope Hegseth coming to her son’s defense was disqualifying, “What kind of parent-teacher conference are we watching right now? Because the future Secretary of Defense needs his mom to come out and defend him? I thought you were against women in combat roles. And besides, I never saw Donald Rumsfeld be like, ‘Hey, I have a warning for the Taliban. Mom, you tell them.’”
Chieng added, “Now, the reason Pete’s mom is part of this story is because a few years ago, during his second divorce, his mom sent him an email where she called him, her own son, a habitual cheater, liar, and abuser of women. But now she’s saying, eh, don’t worry about it!”
After a clip of Penelope Hegseth claiming Pete has changed and “most of” the stories going around about him are “misinformation,” Chieng attacked, “What? Misinformation? You wrote the email! You’re the one who told us he is a piece of shit. And by the way, seven years wasn’t ancient history, okay. We still have the same Spiderman.”
If Penelope Hegseth was a credible enough source to claim Pete had problems in his life he needed to fix then she is a credible enough source to claim that he is a changed man.
Christy won’t concede that it’s just as likely Hegseth is making his mom do this in order to salvage his nomination, making her less than credible — or that it comes off as more than a little emasculating for Hegseth to force his mom to do this media apology tour of shame, as well as to call up senators to beg for their support of her son.