Pete Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that her son’s character was fitting for the defense secretary position.

Penelope was addressing The New York Times publishing a 2018 email, “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 as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Hegseth said, “Let me make two statements first, and one is to President Trump. And I want to say thank you for your belief in my son. We all believe in him. We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I’m not that mother.”

She added, “So the other thing I want to say is, I am here to tell the truth, to tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to the senators on the Hill, especially our female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and that you will listen to Pete.”

Co-host Steve Doocy said, “You are in the news now. So why did you write that email in 2018? What was going on?”

Hegseth said, “Right, let’s go back seven years. Which if we 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. And about two hours later I should, my husband tells me I should think through things a little bit more. But Pete and I are both very passionate people. I wrote that out of love. And about two hours later, I retracted it with an apology email. But nobody’s seen that. So it was a difficult time.”

She added, “I have a very intelligent son. I have a leader son. I have known that since he was two.” 

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