Over the past week, former Fox & Friends co-host and Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth has faced a wave of allegations of sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse, and financial mismanagement. In his monologue Tuesday, recurring Daily Show host Ronny Chieng tried to figure out which part of these revelations was the most depressing.
Reacting to a report that Hegseth once “had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club,” Chieng responded, “Wow, do you know how hard it is to be the saddest thing at a strip club?” A lawyer for Hegseth said they would not comment on the “outlandish claims” published in The New Yorker.
Chieng, however, continued, “I mean, a half-naked pregnant woman dancing to pay her medical bills was looking at him like, ‘Damn, this guy needs to get some help.’”
“Look, you guys are laughing, but does no one see the tragedy in this?” said Chieng. “A warrior forced to fight, when really he just wants to get on that stage and dance.”
Chieng also aired allegations from The New Yorker that Hegseth had “sexually pursued” his female staffers, referring to them as “party girls” and “not-party girls.”
Chieng pulled out a book titled “HR Rules” and said, “OK, let me just check this real quick… All right, yeah, that’s not allowed.”
“I don’t know what’s worse, that he supposedly divided his female staff into party girls and not-party girls, or that he couldn’t think of a word for ‘not-party,’” Chieng joked.
But most notable of all for Chieng was the revelation that Hegseth’s own mother doesn’t even seem to like him.
“At least his mom likes him,” Chieng said, before showing the email Hegseth’s mother sent him in 2018 during his second divorce, where she wrote, “You are an abuser of women,” and added, “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.”
Sarcastically writing on his notepad, Chieng replied, “OK, I’m putting mom down as ‘not a party girl.’”
For more, listen to The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng on The Last Laugh podcast.
