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Pete Hegseth: “It's not true [that Vets for Freedom wound up in enormous…”

Featuring: Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense | National

Pete Hegseth Speaks Out, On Media Smears, Responding to Accusations, and How He'd Reform Military

Published December 4, 2024 | Video Starts at 39:39

We said hey, we're going to pour a few more ads in at a few key places for a few races because we want to double down on trying to win this thing. We're not going to abandon this guy when he's … It's not true [that Vets for Freedom wound up in enormous debt and couldn't pay its creditors]. … experience. I spent the next year and a half fundraising from donors to pay off debt and working with different vendors to try to negotiate down contracts and prices. (39:39–39:50)

CLAIM

Denies allegations of financial mismanagement at Vets for Freedom.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Pete Hegseth

“I was. You were the by far, always the most reliable member of our team. For every moment I was there, you were there every morning on time…”
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“If you wanted another general or another admiral or an executive or a CEO or a politician or a lawyer to run the Defense Department, we've…”
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“I want lethality, lethality, lethality. I want readiness, accountability standards, war fighting.”
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“Clean house of the woke crap. All that stuff, all the, the climate stuff and the CRT and the DEI and the genderism and the get rid of it.”
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“Let's bring the Pentagon back to the people, the people's Pentagon for war fighters.”
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“The advise and consent process is a real thing.”
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“Fox... identified it as anonymous and salacious and ridiculous at the time.”
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“That's their playbook. Get ready for more. And they're going to make it up just like they have so far.”
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“All anonymous, all innuendo, all rumor, nothing sourced, no verification.”
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“You're a threat to their system. You're a threat to all the things in Washington, D.C. the swamp.”
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“What you're seeing right now with me is the art of the smear.”
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“They never asked the people who were involved directly.”
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“Usually from disgruntled people who were fired for cause, who are jealous or want a little bit of retribution.”
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“I've never had a drinking problem.”
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“We’ve got an epidemic of [depression and suicide] in our country.”
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“I'm also the right guy to be in the Pentagon to understand what our young water fighters are going through.”
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“Are we wiping away the garbage of political correct social justice nonsense and focusing just on lethality and meritocracy?”
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“Men and women like that are going to fight future wars, that Donald Trump's going to have to make a decision about whether we enter or not.”
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“I've been honest about that encounter, starting with law enforcement.”
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“They looked into it and said, no way. We're not charging on this at all.”
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“The military hasn't been sufficiently addressed, what some women in the military go through.”
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“All of those allegations are anonymous. All of them are unsubstantiated.”
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“The idea that it was constantly being carried up anywhere is patently false.”
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“NBC is going to do is make up anonymous sources, none of which are close to me, none of which know me, claiming that I had a drinking…”
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“I'm not going to have a drink at all [while serving as Secretary of Defense].”
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“We paid it all off and we squared it away [regarding the debt of Vets for Freedom].”
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“There was zero impropriety [in the financial management of Vets for Freedom].”
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“There's not a single vets group in the country that accomplished more in a smaller amount of time than [Concerned Veterans for America] did.”
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“The Veterans Accountability act and the Choice act for vets, we were the intellectual Harbin. We started that movement.”
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“Donald Trump took [the Veterans Accountability Act and the Choice Act] and ran with it.”
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“I was not fired. I was not pushed out. There were no allegations of impropriety.”
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“The word whistleblower gets used... What that means is a disgruntled email to someone saying, I don't like this person.”
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“The email was forwarded to every single executive and host at Fox News Channel.”
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“Jane Mayer and all these Gabe Sherman and all these trash artists, they're not members of the media. They're leftists with keyboards.”
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“They're agenda drivers whose whole job is to try to destroy anyone who supports Donald Trump.”
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“If you're this young nominee for the secretary of defense who's going to try to do big things on behalf of the war fighter and take on an…”
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“It's not reporting, it's not real, it's fake.”
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“For far too long, conservatives, Republicans, Trump supporters... have to learn to fight through, like, the chaos and the violence of the…”
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“It is an arsenal of lies they mobilize to destroy.”
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“I've had senators look me in the eye, friends. Great. Said they're trying to kill you.”
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“I pray that he gives me the opportunity to serve my country as the Secretary of Defense.”
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“Women are already in common Combat female engagement teams, fighter pilots, you know, eod, military police.”
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“The military has been distracted from its core mission, which is lethality.”
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“Systemic racism is not a problem in our military today.”
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“The percentage of racism and extremism in our military is a fraction of what it is in the general public.”
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“Ultimately, we live in one of the most dangerous times since the end of the Cold War.”
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“You would have to be a fool to look at the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan and think that what we got out of them was beneficial to…”
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“The Communist Chinese are rapidly trying to build a military that outpaces ours.”
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“We live in a dangerous world, which means if you're going to have peace through strength, you need to have the perception and the reality of…”
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