Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran, and former Fox News weekend host and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, experienced a political awakening at Princeton University.
Hegseth detailed his journey to self-discovery in one of the many pieces he wrote as publisher of The Princeton Tory, a conservative magazine at the Ivy League school.
“When I first arrived at Princeton, I honestly didn’t know the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats,” Hegseth wrote in a September 2002 publisher’s note. “That being said, I was raised with a general appreciation for government, patriotism, and small-town values, but most importantly, my parents instilled in me a thorough understanding of right and wrong—and an unwavering faith in an almighty God. Needless to say, when I arrived at Princeton, my eyes were opened quickly and they’ve been wide open ever since.”
TPM reviewed Hegseth’s youthful writings, including one year of columns for the Tory. They represent some of his earliest forays into political commentary, as Hegseth highlighted aspects of campus life that evidently turned him into a conservative firebrand. In pieces for the Tory, Hegseth and the team he oversaw railed against efforts to promote diversity on campus and what they described as the immoral “homosexual lifestyle.” Hegseth also cheered the Iraq War, wondered whether Princeton was too laudatory of Martin Luther King Jr., and advocated for children receiving “strong discipline” from their parents “in the form of spankings, moving next to soap-in-the-mouth.”
Hegseth and Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Prior to Princeton, Hegseth’s activities in his home state of Minnesota were not particularly political. According to the 1999 yearbook from Forest Lake High School, Hegseth played football, basketball, and was a member of the concert choir. He submitted a senior biography that described his dreams to “go to a college (maybe military academy), marry a beautiful wife … roll in the dough, have Pete Jr. and teach him hoops.”
After he arrived at Princeton in the fall of 1999, Hegseth continued his athletic career. However, an article in the school’s newspaper noted he was a “recruiting afterthought” for the basketball team, who “toiled in obscurity” and was “mired to the bench” without ever starting a game prior to a notable clutch performance in a game against Columbia in 2003, his senior year.
Hegseth made much more of an impact in the school’s political scene. He won an election to be class senator his freshman year after campaigning on a promise to “get the job done and get the job done right.” And, in March 2002, he began a stint as publisher of the Tory that lasted through the end of that year. In his first publisher’s note, Hegseth said his goal for the magazine was to highlight the “traditional core to the Princeton experience” amid what he described as the “liberal noise” on campus.
“As conservatives it is our duty to present the other side of the story—the right side,” Hegseth wrote.
A photo of the Tory staff published in that issue featured Hegseth in a “Sore Loserman” t-shirt mocking the unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign run by former Vice President Al Gore and ex-Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman.
At the time Hegseth took over the Tory, which was founded in 1984, America was grappling with the aftermath of the September 11th attacks and the beginnings of the Global War on Terror. Hegseth contributed to that debate in a March 2002 issue with a column where he blamed the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh and other terrorist sympathizers in the country on the “absence of a male disciplinary figure.”
“While mothers often do play the role of family disciplinarian, no phrase has been more responsible for keeping American kids awake at night than ‘wait until your father gets home,’” Hegseth wrote before making his case for “spankings” and “soap-in-the-mouth.” He went on to suggest that, along with a lack of fatherly discipline, “free expression,” and public schools were to blame.
“More and more parents are ushering their kids to public schools at the tender age of three or four, expecting them to not only learn arithmetic, but also right from wrong. Unfortunately, atheist public schools, long stripped of any redemptive moral value, have outlawed God and related discussions of moral absolutes,” Hegseth wrote. “Don’t expect your local teacher to train up a moral child, because they are obligated to encourage any and every lifestyle your child embraces…even those of little Johnny, the Al-Qaeda sympathizer.”
In the following issue, which was published in April 2002, Hegseth focused on what he described as the “gratuitous glorification of diversity” in academia, which, he argued, diminishes focus on “excellence and truth.”
“Diversity does have value, but it can be overstretched,” wrote Hegseth, later adding, “Conservatives feel that the Western tradition, embodied today by America, deserves the most analysis. As the publisher of the Tory I strive to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.”
The following academic year, in September 2002, Hegseth wrote a lengthy column advocating for former President George W. Bush’s push for war in Iraq. Those comments are particularly notable — Trump made criticizing Bush and his own flip flopping on the handling of Iraq a cornerstone of his campaigns. Trump’s exaggerated opposition to the Iraq War became a key part of his questionable “anti war” branding.
While Hegseth noted the Bush administration’s efforts to connect former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks had “floundered,” he argued this “should not deter the United States from its goal of regime change.”
“I believe, if done correctly, eliminating Saddam and liberating Iraq could be the ‘Normandy Invasion’ or ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ of our generation,” Hegseth said. “Not only will a victory in Iraq rid the world of a brutal dictator, but it will also provide an opportunity for democratic principles to gain favor in surrounding Arab polities.”
The next month, Hegseth’s Tory publisher’s note declared that he was “not encouraged” by the “educational principles … guiding our generation.” Among other things, he cited the “encouragement and support” for “homosexuality.”
During the course of his time at the Tory, Hegseth’s various writings made him something of a lightning rod on campus. He inspired at least five letters and columns that were published in the school’s newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, by critics.
Along with Hegseth’s own notes and columns, the Tory published a feature called “The Rant” that ran in the front of each issue. These columns did not have an individual author and they were identified as being “compiled by the Tory editors.”
In March 2002, for Hegseth’s first issue as publisher, the “Rant” asked the question, “Is Martin Luther King Really More Important than Lincoln?”
“We find it absurd that the University spends so much time celebrating the life of Dr. King without even mentioning the original champion of minority rights, Abraham Lincoln. Martin Luther King deserves extensive study and praise, but only alongside Lincoln,” the column said.
That issue’s “rant” also contained more cheerleading for the Iraq War.
“Can we please go to Iraq already?” the ranters asked. “We’ve established that Saddam is evil and that he has biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction at his fingertips. What further evidence is needed? Let’s take him out, and his crazy son with him.”
LGBTQ rights were a particular focus for “The Rant.” In April 2002, the Tory’s ranters noted the growing effort to legalize gay marriage.
“The movement to legitimize the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriages is strong and must be vigorously opposed,” the rant said. “Homosexuals themselves should not be demonized; however, their lifestyle deserves absolutely no special legal status.”
Five months later, in September 2002, the Tory ranters expressed concerns about newspaper coverage of gay weddings.
“The New York Times recently announced that homosexual ‘marriage’ announcements would start appearing in its pages. Other regional papers have also followed suit. The basic logic is that if individuals love each other, and want to get married, then it is sufficiently newsworthy to warrant an announcement in the papers. (Last time we checked, homosexual marriage was illegal, but that’s beside the point.) The explanation sounds nice on the surface, but its logic is dangerous,” the column said. “At what point does the paper deem a ‘relationship’ unfit for publication? What if we ‘loved’ our sister and wanted to marry her? Or maybe two women at the same time? A 13-year-old? The family dog?”
The next month, the ranters criticized some of their fellow students who participated in a gay and lesbian “kiss-in” demonstration.
“Unfortunately, the truth is that all of you who participated in the ‘Kiss-In’ only managed to draw attention to yourselves. You didn’t change any existing stereotypes, or force people to alter their pre-existing notions of homosexuality,” the ranters wrote. “And, in failing so miserably, you helped to remove more credibility from the homosexual movement and made its cause seem even more irreverent, illegitimate, and irrelevant.”
That column concluded with a blunt statement.
“Hey, boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral,” it said.
While the various “Rant” pieces didn’t have a single author, that quote inspired a backlash that made clear Hegseth personally supported the column’s anti-LGBTQ views. Nina Langsam, who was the president of Princeton’s undergraduate student government at the time, emailed the Tory to say that, even as a Republican, she was “very offended” by the sentence describing gay life as “abnormal and immoral.” Langsam’s letter was published in the November/December 2002 issue of the Tory along with a response from Hegseth and the magazine’s editor in chief, Brad Simmons. The pair defended what they described as the publication’s perspective on “the ethics of homosexuality.”
“Overwhelming majorities of Americans agree with the notion that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not moral equivalents,” Hegseth and Simmons wrote.
That issue was also Hegseth’s last as publisher of the Tory. He summed up his tenure in a note wherein he suggested his time at the magazine had only hardened his views.
“I’ve learned a great deal over my twelve months as Tory publisher,” Hegseth wrote. “I’ve been asked to defend my views, renege numerous opinions, and have been personally confronted, both in person and in print. But after all that, I’ve come to one conclusion: the conservative worldview holds water.”
