Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth does believe in a woman’s right to vote, the Pentagon has insisted, a week after he ignited a controversy by posting a video on X of a Christian evangelist suggesting that right should be repealed.
Hegseth, 45, posted a seven-minute CNN segment on his account last Friday profiling Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, who founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and whose congregation the secretary belongs to, with the comment: “All of Christ for All of Life.”
The video features a brief interlude in which journalist Pamela Brown also interviews two other pastors, Toby Sumpter and Jared Longshoreman, in which the latter expresses his support for scrapping the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted American women suffrage in 1920 after a fierce campaign by contemporary feminists.
“I would support it on the basis that the atomization that comes with our current system is not good for humans,” Longshoreman states.
Hegseth’s post attracted a swathe of withering responses and personal attacks, one of which quoted the fourth president, James Madison’s famous remark of 1803: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”
Asked about the clip by reporters on Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson said: “Of course, the secretary thinks that women should have the right to vote.” She declined to be drawn on why he had felt compelled to post it.
“He appreciates many of [Pastor Wilson’s] writings and teachings,” the spokesperson said. “I’m not going to litigate every single aspect of what he may or may not believe in a certain video.”
Hegseth is mentioned in the segment as an attendee at Wilson’s services and over his introduction of monthly prayer sessions at the Pentagon.
In the film, Brown also interviews Jennifer Butler, founder of the progressive Faith in Democracy group, who expresses disquiet about Wilson’s close connection to the Donald Trump administration via the defense secretary.
“He is rapidly gaining in power,” she warned. “He has hundreds of churches established around the country. They actually literally want to take over towns and cities and they have access to this administration.”
Wilson himself is forthcoming in the film about his opinion, which he insists is based on scripture, that women should not be in certain leadership positions, and doubles down on a claim he first made in the 1990s that the relationship between masters and slaves in 19th-century America was often affectionate and not necessarily adversarial.
According to The Huffington Post, Hegseth’s views on women “drove tension” while he was a student at Princeton.
