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WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump's pick to serve as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is in the hot seat.

I fear Hegseth, a combat veteran and "Fox & Friends" weekend anchor, is not up to the job. I'd rather see someone like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who successfully has run the Sunshine State.

But the campaign to slime Hegseth makes you root for the guy.

I don't put a lot of stock in anonymous accusers -- so The New Yorker story that relied on unnamed sources to paint Hegseth as, well, brutish toward women did not affect my view of Hegseth.

For one thing, Hegseth denies allegations of repeated public intoxication and the sexual assault of a woman in Monterey, California, in 2017. Police investigated the incident but did not press charges. Hegseth reached a financial settlement with his accuser.

The latest hit: Based on an anonymous source, The New Yorker reported Hegseth was seen "completely drunk in a public place" in 2014.

In the age of cellphone cameras and social media, you'd think photos would have been taken and circulated widely.

What I found troubling in the story were allegations that Hegseth had trouble managing two veterans advocacy groups. CNN commentator Margaret Hoover, who was an adviser to one of the groups, Vets for Freedom, before Hegseth became a VFF director, told CNN that Hegseth ran the group "very poorly."

It was an organization with fewer than 10 employees and a budget of less than $10 million, "And he couldn't do that properly," Hoover said.

She added, "I don't know how he's going to run an organization with an $857 billion budget, and 3 million individuals, based on what I saw in those years."

Even if Hegseth had done a flawless job at VFF, that doesn't mean the highly decorated vet has the skill set to oversee nearly 1 million service members and civilians.

Hegseth styles himself as a "warfighter," but the job's most important skill is management.

Friday, The New York Times posted an email Penelope Hegseth sent to her son in 2018 during his second divorce, in which she berated her son for lying, cheating and sleeping around. (Hegseth has since remarried.) Hegseth's mother quickly sent her son an apology. Somehow the email made it into The New York Times.

Wednesday morning, Mrs. Hegseth appeared on "Fox & Friends" to assure the public that her anchor son is not the man he was seven years ago. She said that today her son is the right man for the job.

If he makes it.

On her Sirius XM show, Megyn Kelly asked Hegseth, "Do you think you're being Kavanaughed right now?"

"That's their playbook," Hegseth responded.

Yes, with America's national security at stake, big media are focused on thinly sourced allegations of personal misbehavior. That's what's wrong with journalism today. Forget substance. If there is a conservative in the spotlight, the prevailing instinct is to go below the belt.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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