Pete Hegseth on Wednesday pledged to not drink alcohol while serving as defense secretary if the Senate confirms him to the role, following allegations about continued alcohol problems.
"This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won't be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I'm doing it," Donald Trump's pick for defense secretary told Megyn Kelly on her podcast.
"My plan going forward — ongoing— is, when I deployed, we had something called General Order Number 1," Hegseth said.
"And in General Order Number 1, it is, you are not allowed to drink while you're on deployment," Hegseth said. "So, if you're in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a combat zone, you're not allowed to drink."
"That's how I view this role as secretary of defense, is that I'm not gonna have a drink at all," Hegseth added.
The embattled defense secretary-designate Hegseth faces allegations that his drinking partially caused him to be forced out of two nonprofit groups he ran and also worried his coworkers at Fox News.
"That's not hard for me, because it's not a problem for me," the former Fox News co-host said. "But I need to make sure the senators, and the troops, and President Trump, and everybody else knows: When you call me 24/7, you're getting fully dialed in Pete, just like you always did in Iraq and Afghanistan."
