Let’s face it, Pete Hegseth’s military tough-guy image was never safe with Greg Gutfeld around.
Before Hegseth became Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, he was a co-host on “Fox & Friends Weekend” from 2017 to 2024, overlapping with the “Gutfeld!” host and his colleagues. Which means they all had offices on the 21st floor of Fox’s headquarters building in Manhattan.
On Friday night’s “Gutfeld!” show, the panel was discussing Trump’s latest executive order – to restore the Department of Defense’s name to its original: the Department of War. While the Fox News late-night panel generally agreed that a return to the historic, more menacing-sounding name was the right move, the foll0w-up discussion wasn’t exactly on-mission.
Turning to longtime “Gutfeld!” panelist Kat Timpf, Gutfeld said: “You know, but it’s funny, Kat, like we have known Pete for how long? Ten years? Probably more – and it is so funny to see people discover who he is and that is exactly who Pete is. Like, he really is like that.”
“Exactly,” Timpf replied. “I know. And to see the number of shirtless photos – it is crazy, right?”
That’s where Gutfeld revealed the sensitive secret: “The only weird thing about Pete – and this is the honest to God truth – the scented candles in his office. Do you remember that?”
Timpf quipped that Hegseth “never lit scented candles for me in his office.”
“I swear on a stack of Bibles that Dana [Perino] came to me and said … ‘Do you think you could tell Pete that his candles were too strong?’ Everybody in that department on the 21st floor was complaining.”
Comedian and co-panelist David Angelo immediately saw this as a security threat.
“I’m worried that you gave out that candle intel,” he said. “The Iranians are going to go sabotage Yankee Candle.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
