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Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be Defense Secretary, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
On Tuesday, NBC broke the story of a sworn testimony from the ex-sister-in-law of Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s pick for the US Secretary of Defense. In an affidavit, which was released for senators to review in advance of Hegseth’s confirmation hearing this week, Danielle Hegseth alleged that Hegseth’s former wife, Samantha Hegseth, had often feared for her safety. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) said in a press release that the affidavit alleged that Samantha Hegseth “had an ‘escape plan’ that involved texting a ‘safe word’ to friends and family to urgently request assistance without putting herself in more danger with Mr. Hegseth.”
Buried toward the end of Sen. Reed’s press release was another eye-opening detail. Pete Hegseth allegedly believed that “women should not vote or work and that Christians needed to have more children so they could overtake the Muslim population.”
Even as Hegseth has repeatedly called for an end to women serving in combat roles in the military, the extreme nature of those remarks might seem astonishing for a candidate slated to assume one of the highest leadership roles in the US government. But in the religious movement that Hegseth is connected to, beliefs about the subservient role of women are widely held.
As I noted at the time that Trump nominated Hegseth:
What Hegseth does have are connections to the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their branch of Protestant Christianity—known as Reformed or Reconstructionist—is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law.
Last year, the magazine Nashville Christian Family ran a profile of Hegseth, in which he mentioned being a member of a “Bible and book study” that focused on the book My Life for Yours by Doug Wilson, the 71-year-old unofficial patriarch of the TheoBros. Patriarch is the right word: When I interviewed Wilson a few months ago, he said that he, like many other TheoBros, believes women never should have been given the right to vote.
Hegseth attends a Tennessee church in the denomination founded by Wilson.
Leaders in Wilson’s movement believe that women are called by God to obey their husbands. “Elevate women to positions of civil authority or save the lives of babies,” Joel Webbon, a Texas-based pastor and leader in the TheoBros movement, wrote on X in October. “A nation cannot do both.” In a 2023 post, Wilson alluded to “something called the patriarchy—that which, according to our soi-disant and lisping political theorists, must be smashed. Only they say something like ‘thmasth.’”
He isn’t the only prominent figure to endorse the patriarchal notions of the TheoBros. During his campaign, Vice President JD Vance took heat for a clip in which he referred to working women as “childless cat ladies.” Like Hegseth, Vance has traveled in the same circles as the TheoBros.
Hegseth and his ex-wife have denied the claims in the affidavit. The Senate will vote Thursday on whether to confirm Hegseth as the new US Secretary of Defense.
