What Is Pete Hegseth's Net Worth and Salary?
Pete Hegseth is an American television host, producer, and writer who has a net worth of $6 million. Pete Hegseth served as an officer of the Army National Guard and as an executive director of Concerned Veterans for America and Vets For Freedom. In May 2018, it was reported that Hegseth was being considered to replace David Shulkin as United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs, but Robert Wilkie was chosen instead. Pete has been involved in conservative politics since college, and he occasionally advised Donald Trump during his presidency.
Pete became a contributor for Fox News in 2014, and he has appeared on programs such as "Fox and Friends," "America Live," "Red Eye w/Tom Shillue," "The Kelly File," "The Factor," "Kennedy Live," "The Greg Gutfeld Show," "Watters' World," "Tucker Carlson Tonight," "Unfiltered with Dan Bongino," "The Faulkner Focus," and "Hannity." He wrote, produced, and hosted the 2020 Fox Nation special "Battle in the Holy City," which focused on "the conflict between Muslims and Jews over Temple Mount in Jerusalem." Hegseth has published the books "In the Arena: Good Citizens, a Great Republic, and How One Speech Can Reinvigorate America" (2016), "American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free" (2020), "Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes" (2020), and "Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation" (2022).
In November 2024, Donald Trump selected Pete to be his Secretary of Defense.
Real Estate
In June of 2022, Pete paid $3.425 million for a home in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The 9,000-square-foot mansion has four bedrooms and seven bathrooms.
Early Life
Pete Hegseth was born Peter Brian Hegseth on June 6, 1980, in Forest Lake, Minnesota. Pete is the son of Penny and Brian Hegseth, and he has two brothers. After graduating from Forest Lake Area High School, he enrolled at Princeton University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2003. As a Princeton student, Hegseth published the conservative student publication "The Princeton Tory" and was a member of the men's basketball team. He later attended Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, graduating with a Master of Public Policy in 2013.
Career
After graduating from Princeton, Pete began working as an equity capital markets analyst at Bear Stearns and serving as a reserve infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard. In 2004, he was an infantry platoon leader at Guantánamo Bay as part of the Minnesota National Guard, then he was an infantry platoon leader in Baghdad and Samarra and later a civil–military operations officer in Samarra. While serving in Iraq, Hegseth was awarded an Army Commendation Medal and Bronze Star Medal. In 2012, he returned to active duty, this time as a captain. After being deployed to Afghanistan, Pete served as a senior counterinsurgency instructor at Kabul's Counterinsurgency Training Center. He later became a major in the Individual Ready Reserve. After returning from Iraq, Hegseth briefly worked at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which he left in 2007, then he was the executive director of the political advocacy organization Vets For Freedom until 2012. That same year, he formed MN PAC. A 2018 "APM Reports" article stated that Pete "spent a third of the PAC's money on Christmas parties for families and friends."
(Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Hegseth also served as the executive director of the advocacy group Concerned Veterans for America (which was funded by Charles and David Koch) until 2015. He hired his brother Philip, who graduated from college in May 2015, to work for the group, paying him more than $100,000. Pete's lawyer said that Philip possessed the qualifications for the media relations job and that private entities aren't prohibited from hiring relatives. In 2012, Hegseth sought the Republican nomination for one of Minnesota's seats in the U.S. Senate, but he dropped out of the race after the nominating convention in May 2012. In 2014, he became a Fox News contributor, and he has often criticized Democrats and the media on the air. In 2018, he co-hosted "All-American New Year" on the network, and a pre-recorded interview he had conducted with Donald Trump was broadcast during the program. In July 2021, Rep. James Talarico of Texas was interviewed by Pete and called him out for dishonesty regarding the 2020 election, stating, "You have made a lot of money personally and you have enriched a lot of corporations with advertising by getting on here and spewing lies and conspiracy theories to folks who trust you."
Personal Life
Pete was married to Meredith Schwarz from 2005 to 2009. After their divorce, he wed Samantha Deering in 2010, and they welcomed sons Rex, Boone, and Gunner together. While married to Deering, Hegseth had a daughter, Gwen, with Fox producer Jennifer Rauchet in August 2017. Pete and Samantha divorced that same month, and two years later, Hegseth married Rauchet, who has three children from her first marriage.
Pete has said that he's a Christian, and in a 2022 interview with "Faithwire," he stated, "I've got a bunch of kids and you start to realize that the only thing that matters is introducing them to Jesus Christ. You spend so much time teaching them how to dribble a basketball or to love America — and those are all great, but they're utterly insufficient."
Controversies
While filming a live segment on June 14, 2015, Pete accidentally struck a drummer from West Point military academy with an axe. The drummer suffered "only minor injuries."
In May 2018, Pete mocked what he referred to as the "failing 'New York Times'" for not reporting on the capture of several ISIS leaders despite the fact that the newspaper had been one of the first publications to report the story two days earlier.
After it was reported in May 2019 that Donald Trump was thinking about pardoning several members of the U.S. military who had been charged with war crimes, CNN and "The Daily Beast" revealed that Hegseth had been trying to convince Trump to pardon them for months. During this time, Pete had been speaking about these cases on Fox News without ever disclosing his involvement.
In July 2019, Hegseth accused Muslim congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of having a "Hamas agenda."
In January 2020, he encouraged Trump to bomb the Iranian homeland if it was believed that they were storing weapons there, stating, "I don't care about Iranian cultural sites, and I'll tell why. If they could, if Iran could, if you understand the Islamic Republic of Iran, of Islamists, if they could, if they had the power, they would destroy every single one of our cultural sites and build a mosque on top of it."
In February 2020, Pete stated that Democrats were "rooting for coronavirus to spread. They're rooting for it to grow. They're rooting for the problem to get worse." He later suggested that Democrats made up the Omicron variant to help their performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
Awards, Badges, and Decorations
Hegseth has earned two Bronze Stars, a Combat Infantryman Badge, and an Expert Infantryman Badge. He has also received an Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, and two Army Commendation Medals.
