The media has been attacking Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, with leaks about a years-old sexual assault allegation that was already investigated by police and proven to be false.
However, The New York Times reached a new low when it published an out-of-context private email between Pete Hegseth and his mother, Penelope Hegseth.
The New York Times obtained the private email between Hegseth and his mother from a person with ties to the Hegseth family.
Hegseth’s mother, in a 2018 email to her son, expressed her disappointment in him for his treatment of women during his divorce from his second wife.
Penelope Hegseth sent her son a follow-up email apologizing to him for her “emotional message,” but The New York Times only published her first email.
Mrs. Hegseth blasted The Times for publishing her private email.
“In the interview, she defended her son and disavowed the sentiments she had expressed in the initial email about his character and treatment of women. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting.”” The New York Times reported.
The New York Times reported:
The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.
“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.
She also wrote: “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 (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
Mrs. Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce.
President Trump’s spox Steven Cheung ripped the New York Times for publishing the private email between Pete Hegseth and his mother.
“Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in an email that The Times was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context snippet” of Mrs. Hegseth’s exchange with her son, adding that Mrs. Hegseth had “expressed regret for her emotional message and apologized.”” The New York Times reported.
