US President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial nomination of TV host Pete Hegseth to run the Defense Department was teetering Wednesday as Republican senators raised questions over his fitness for the powerful role.

Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer and Fox News weekend presenter, is under intense pressure over a series of misconduct allegations, including accusations of alcohol abuse and a sexual assault claim from 2017, over which no charges were filed.

Hegseth denies all wrongdoing but the controversy has left Trump’s transition officials scrambling to avoid the embarrassment of a second Cabinet nomination collapsing amid dwindling support from Republicans in Congress.

Running the Pentagon is one of the biggest roles in public office. The Defense Department employs almost three million military and civilian staff, and defense spending — including veterans’ care — topped $1 trillion in the 2023 fiscal year.

Up to six Senate Republicans — including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill — have voiced doubts over Hegseth’s ability to walk the tightrope to confirmation, according to NBC News.

The questions around Hegseth’s character deepened as an old email emerged in which Hegseth’s own mother called him an “abuser of women.”

“I think some of these articles are very disturbing,” Graham told CBS News of the media coverage around the nomination.

“He obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is going to be difficult.”

Republicans will have 53 seats in the incoming Senate majority, meaning Trump’s nominees can afford to lose the support only three Republican votes at their January confirmation hearings, assuming all Democrats vote against them.

US media have floated various alternatives, with Trump said to by mulling one-time Republican primary rival and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The move would raise eyebrows in Washington, as the pair had only the most perfunctory of reconciliations after a bitter presidential nomination battle that left both bruised, although the governor did endorse Trump after dropping out.

On what is being seen as a day of reckoning for Hegseth, the 44-year-old was due for further meetings with influential Republicans on Capitol Hill, and his first TV interview since being nominated, on Fox News.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington, United States:

Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, on Tuesday to lead the Department of Education, which he has pledged to abolish.

Describing McMahon as a “fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights,” Trump said in a statement: “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

McMahon is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team ahead of his return to the White House in January. It is tasked with filling some 4,000 positions in the government.

Regarding McMahon’s experience in education, Trump cited her two-year stint on the Connecticut Board of Education and 16 years on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic school.

McMahon left WWE in 2009 to run in vain for US Senate, and has been a major donor to Trump.

Since 2021, she has chaired the Center For The American Worker at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.

During the election campaign Trump promised to do away with the federal education department when he returns to the White House.

“I say it all the time. I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said in September during a rally in Wisconsin.

At the Republican convention in Milwaukee, McMahon said she was “privileged to call Donald Trump a colleague and a boss,” as well as “a friend.”

Her ties with Trump go back to her years in the professional wrestling industry — she said she first met him as chief executive at WWE.

At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once body-slammed her husband, legendary wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.

In 2017, she was confirmed as the head of the Small Business Administration, which is responsible for supporting America’s millions of small businesses, which employ around half the country’s private-sector workforce.

In nominating her, Trump pointed to her experience in business, helping to grow the WWE.

After leaving the administration, she served as chair of the pro-Trump America First Action SuperPAC, or political action committee.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)