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T he United States defence secretary Pete Hegseth credits “two J’s” with turning his life around for the better. The two J’s in question? Jesus Christ... and his wife Jennifer .
“Without those two J’s, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now,” he told the broadcaster Megyn Kelly in a 2024 interview, shortly before his confirmation hearing. It’s not uncommon to hear politicians waxing lyrical about how they just couldn’t have managed without the support of their ever-understanding partner behind the scenes. It’s practically a mainstay of every campaign trail or leadership race, in fact.
Jennifer Hegseth’s influence has been described as ‘not normal’ and even ‘bonkers’ by critics (Getty) But since Hegseth was sworn in as defence secretary – a title he has since re-imagined as “secretary of war” – last January, his wife has come to play an outsize role in her husband’s political life. The former Fox News producer appears to enjoy a level of involvement in Pentagon matters that has been labelled as “not normal”, even “bonkers”, by fellow politicians and former staffers. Her presence goes way beyond her prominent appearances in the huge family photos that decorate the walls of her husband’s department.
Jennifer apparently helps her husband to prepare for media interviews and suggest concepts for social media videos , in which she often appears by his side – as she did when she joined Hegseth to complete a workout with US troops in May, wearing a slogan T-shirt that read “This Is War”. She has also reportedly sat in on high-level meetings with foreign politicians and the military, and is rumoured to have pushed for Hegseth’s attempts to limit journalists’ access to the Pentagon. It all seems to add up to an unprecedented level of access for a spouse who has neither an official role within the Pentagon, nor any military or political experience.
And as the atmosphere inside the Defence Department becomes increasingly chaotic, with army secretary Dan Driscoll recently joining an exodus of top-tier military staff, Jennifer’s presence is thought to be causing consternation. According to one Daily Mail report, she has picked up the unenviable nickname “Yoko Ono”, with one source describing her as akin to Hegseth’s “parole officer and PR agent all at once”. There are whispers, too, that Hegseth might be eyeing a 2028 presidential run , potentially going up against vice president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination.
With his focus on so-called “culture war” issues, and Trump-style theatrics, he may well appeal to the Maga crowd – although he has for now shrugged off reports of any such ambitions, which he has described as “100 per cent false”. Should he change his mind, though, it’s a given that Jennifer would play a huge role in steering his campaign – and in crafting his image as a spiritual heir to Trump. Indeed, her career in right-wing media appears to have put her in good stead to pull strings behind the scenes in the Maga-verse.
The 46-year-old studied journalism and spent 18 years working as a producer on Fox’s morning show Fox & Friends . It was here that she met Hegseth, who appeared as a regular contributor before joining the programme as a weekend co-host in 2017. At the time, both Pete and Jennifer were married to other people – the former to his second wife, Samantha Deering, and the latter to property exec Dennis Rauchet.
But in August 2017, they welcomed a daughter, and a month later, Deering filed for divorce. After the relationship became public, Jennifer started a new role on another Fox show, Watters’ World . They eventually married in 2019 at – where else? – a Trump golf club in New Jersey, in a ceremony attended by the president himself, as well as Fox News firebrand Sean Hannity; beforehand, the happy couple were photographed wearing red caps bearing the slogan “Make Marriage Great Again”.
The couple met while working on Fox News, with Hegseth’s then-wife filing for divorce shortly after he welcomed a child with his colleague (Getty) Their blended family now comprises three children from Hegseth’s second marriage, three from Jennifer’s union with Rauchet, and their daughter Gwendolyn. Jennifer is thought to have taken charge of homeschooling some of their brood, teaching them according to a conservative, faith-based curriculum. And yet she still reportedly has time for matters of state.
Hegseth seemed to set the tone for his reign as defence secretary when he brought Jennifer along to meet with senators ahead of his confirmation hearings – a move that, he admitted in a later podcast interview, was “unusual” but “felt so right and so natural”. Others weren’t quite so effusive. “What I’ve seen with Hegseth – never in my life have I ever seen this,” a former Pentagon official told CNN .
She also set about interviewing new staff members, according to a New York Times report. John Ullyot, who briefly served as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, told the paper that Jennifer bombarded him with “unexpectedly detailed and hard-edged questions” over the course of 40 minutes. As Hegseth’s producer, Jennifer would have become used to briefing her husband on the issues of the day and helping him prepare for interviews.
At Fox, she apparently had a reputation as someone with an eye for “red meat” stories that would resonate with a pro-Maga audience. ‘Bonkers’: Jennifer’s attendance at high-level meetings has reportedly raised eyebrows (Getty) It’s a skill that may well have proved useful as Hegseth swappebd presenting for politics. Indeed, many of the changes he has implemented have been aimed at dismantling diversity and inclusion policies in the military.
He has boasted of removing “the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department”. By leaning into these culture war battles, Hegseth – and his wife – may be attempting to carve out his position as Trump’s spiritual successor. Crafting your husband’s image, though, is one thing.
Sticking around for top-level diplomatic discussions is another. When Hegseth was just months into his role, The Washington Post reported that Jennifer was present for a meeting with John Healey , then the UK’s secretary of defence, in March 2025, which came at a particularly tense moment, just after the US had announced it was cutting off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Why was a political spouse with no official Defence Department role sitting in on such a meeting, where the list of attendees is usually carefully vetted and limited to those with top-level security clearance?
It was an unprecedented move. “It sends a message to the department,” Chuck Hagel, a Republican secretary of defence under Barack Obama, told the Post . “Why is the secretary doing that?
It puts staff on guard over what to say and to whom. It introduces an issue you don’t need to introduce.” Jennifer Hegseth was appointed as the chair of the Military Spouse Commission this summer (Getty) The Pentagon has not confirmed whether Jennifer possesses such clearance, or any at all (for security reasons, the Department doesn’t publicly discuss this status for individuals). And its chief spokesperson Sean Parnell told The New York Times that she was only introduced before leaving the meeting soon after; he said that she has not been present for any meetings involving classified information.
Not too long afterwards, another damaging report emerged, this time claiming that Hegseth had shared information about US operations against the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat, with members including Jennifer, his personal lawyer, and his brother Phil, who holds the role of senior adviser to the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and liaison officer to the Defence Department (an appointment that also stirred up a nepotism row). Ullyot, the former Pentagon spokesperson, told The New York Times that it was “bonkers that a defense secretary would involve his wife in his sensitive official duties, including sharing details of an impending military operation, and face zero consequences”, adding that a president “deserves better judgement from his national security leaders”. The criticism, though, hasn’t encouraged Jennifer to take a step back.
Instead, she seems to be more present than ever. Earlier this summer, shortly after her military workout photo opp, she and six of the couple’s children accompanied Hegseth to France for the D-Day commemorations. Then she was appointed as chair of the president’s Military Spouse Commission, joining Trump for an official announcement from the Oval Office.
“We’ve always been ride or die,” Hegseth declared of their relationship last year. “It’s always been, ‘we’re doing this together.’” Clearly these two come as a pair – whether their double act can win over the political establishment and the public, though, remains to be seen.
Source: The Independent
