Pamela Brown Says She Changed Pete Hegseth's Far Right Pastor's Opinion of CNN

"I was always thinking about Pete Hegseth and the way he was bringing in prayer into DoD and doing other things, and some of the tweets coming out of DoD around religion, said Brown. I wanted to better understand the thinking of his church network that could be influencing him as the DoD secretary and kind of give us a window into that."

"I asked him, what do you think a woman's role is in society? And he said, without missing a beat, women are the kind of people that people come out of. And I sat there waiting for him to expand on that, and he didn't, said Brown. Full stop[] And I said, Well, hold on a second, so you just think we're a vessel?' And then he went on to say, well no, it's not like pigs and horses, it doesn't take any talent."

"My approach was, I'm not going in with judgment, I'm going in with curiosity. Who am I to judge, right? I'm really going in with a genuine curiosity, and I think he could feel that. Like, I wasn't out to get him, said Brown. She continued: And actually after that interview aired, he wrote a really nice blog post, not to like toot our own horn, but saying, he thanked us publicly, saying they were very fair. [] I think it showed something. You know, he said, he started this off saying CNN thinking we were the enemy. And then he ended it, after we did the journalism,"

Pamela Brown engaged Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson to assess the church network that could influence Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, motivated by Hegseth's prayer initiatives and religion-related tweets from DoD. Wilson articulated extreme views about women's roles, stating that 'women are the kind of people that people come out of' and making demeaning comparisons. Brown approached the encounter with curiosity rather than judgment. Wilson later publicly praised the coverage as fair and expressed gratitude. Select portions of the extended encounter went viral due to the provocative statements and raised questions about religious influence within defense circles.

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