'Hug goodbye lingered': Writer tells of creepy meeting with 'perfect monster' Pete Hegseth

Columnist Ana Marie Cox has written a scathing takedown of Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be his new secretary of defense.

Writing in The New Republic, Cox describes Hegseth as "the perfect monster" for an incoming cabinet that she believes looks more like DC Comics' "Suicide Squad" of villains than a typical White House administration.

"For the members of this new administration, favor-trading is their most obvious skill and slick morals the defining character trait," she contends. "In a normal situation, these things would be blots on a résumé. In the Trump world, consequence-free bad behavior is the résumé. Hell, given the propensity of Trump administrations to become a snakepit, it’s also a survival skill."

Turning specifically to Hegseth, Cox recalls one of her own personal interactions with him during a Fox News appearance that left her with an uncomfortable feeling.

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"Even on the set of Fox & Friends, he’s a loose cannon eager to provoke (throwing axes with dangerous abandon, bragging about his refusal to wash his hands)," she writes. "He was considerably looser after martinis and bourbon. I was stone-cold sober. The hug goodbye lingered; his emphasis on how good it was to see me left me with a buzzy sense of unexpressed energy."

As it turns out, Cox continues, she seemingly had it lucky compared to other women.

"Now we know his hands can get very dirty," she writes. "In 2017, a woman identified as Jane Doe made a police report that described Hegseth committing sexual assault... Hegseth later agreed to pay Doe an undisclosed sum in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement. In the police report, he copped to almost every untoward detail of her story with the important exception of locking her in his hotel room and taking her phone."

Given the lengthy list of sexual misconduct allegations leveled against the president-elect himself, Cox believes that Hegseth's behavior makes him an asset in Trump's eyes.

"Hegseth’s sexual misconduct isn’t a drawback to be judged against his lickspittle loyalty, it’s an essential part of the audition," she concludes.