Donald Trump’s pick for defence secretary has pledged to carry on and said he still has the president-elect’s backing amid reports he could be replaced.

Mr Trump was said to be considering ditching Pete Hegseth in favour of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

There are doubts Mr Hegseth could clear the Senate vote required due to claims about his personal and professional life.

On Wednesday, he met Republican senators whose vote he will need to be confirmed, and in a clip posted on X told a CBS News reporter he still had Mr Trump’s backing.

He said: “I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said ‘keep going, keep fighting’… Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter. I’m here for the warfighters. This is personal and passionate for me.”

Mr Trump’s picks for his cabinet have attracted controversy and there has been speculation some might struggle to be confirmed.

Matt Gaetz, his initial pick for attorney general, has already withdrawn from the process.

Two sources familiar with the decision-making told Sky News’ US partner network NBC News that DeSantis, once a rival in the Republican presidential race, could be chosen to replace Mr Hegseth.

Mr DeSantis is “very much in contention”, according to one source.

NBC News reported Mr Hegseth’s nomination was in jeopardy after at least six Republican senators were wavering in their support.

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Mr Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has attracted controversy over claims of excessive drinking, financial mismanagement and treatment of women.

An article in the New Yorker magazine reported that the allegations led to him having to quit leadership roles in two separate non-profit organisations for military veterans.

Mr DeSantis pulled out of the contest to be the Republican nominee for president in January after falling well behind Mr Trump in the primary campaign.

We’re in the midst of a strange and unnerving geopolitical vacuum right now.

Transitions between American presidencies are always fraught times.

Domestically, there’s always the question of how much the outgoing and incoming administration teams will cooperate.

Globally, White House transition is a time when countries align themselves as best they can to the new American administration.

It’s also a time they may want to manoeuvre, to get things done, to make moves, before the new occupant of the White House moves in.

At this time of profound global instability, and with a shift between two wholly different leaders with starkly different outlooks, this particular transition feels unprecedented and fraught with uncertainty.

Joe Biden is not just a lame duck president.

He is a very elderly man whose faculties, physical and mental, are a genuine cause for concern.

His fitness for office has been without sufficient US media scrutiny for far too long.

His appearance on the visit to Angola this week, where he had to be guided and helped around by his Angolan host, only served to underline the extraordinary fragility of the current American president.

As he was asked for updates on the developing situation in South Korea, which his own state department had described as “gravely concerning”, he could offer nothing except a confused look and a vague assurance that he was “being briefed”.

He absolutely does not present the attributes of the leader he needs to be at this time of global instability.

Then there is Donald Trump. His picks for his cabinet are undergoing impressive scrutiny which is exposing their suitability, and his judgement.

Beyond that spectacle, he is already making clear pronouncements with Trumpian gusto – on Ukraine, on Gaza, on tariffs and more – which are aspirational only until 20 January when he takes office.

He’s acting distinctly presidential already, comfortably filling the existing vacuum.

Mar-a-Lago has seen a flurry of world leaders visiting, all aware of how profoundly consequential his presidency could be.

This weekend, while President Biden is concluding a hugely belated trip to Africa that now feels like an “ought-to-do” afterthought, Mr Trump will be among world leaders in Paris at the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

President Macron is fully aware of how much Europe now needs Mr Trump to be as close and aligned as possible.

Fears among many EU states that Russia is preparing for war with Europe within a matter of years are not overstated.

And so Mr Macron surpassed even himself with sharp, artful flattery by offering the Paris invitation to Mr Trump.

It will be Mr Trump’s presidential return to the world stage. A big moment, no question, and he will milk it.

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There have been numerous geopolitical moments in the past few weeks – developments in Syria, in Ukraine, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Georgia, on the Korean Peninsula.

In each of these places, and others, regional powers are manoeuvring to influence events and change facts on the ground ahead of 20 January.

We are in a uniquely vulnerable time right now and entering a particularly uncertain one.

Donald Trump has filed a motion to dismiss the hush money case in which he was convicted due to his victory in the US presidential election.

In May, a New York jury found Mr Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to commit election fraud.

It was the first time a US president had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offence.

Mr Trump had tried to cover up “hush money” payments to a porn star in the days before the 2016 election.

When Stormy Daniels‘ claims of a sexual liaison threatened to upend his presidential campaign, Trump directed his lawyer to pay $130,000 (£102,000) to keep her quiet.

A judge delayed Mr Trump’s scheduled 26 November sentencing indefinitely last month to give him the chance to seek dismissal.

A dismissal would erase Mr Trump’s historic conviction, sparing him of a criminal record and possible prison sentence.

The judge could also decide to uphold the verdict and proceed to sentencing, delay the case until Mr Trump leaves office, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump’s parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court or choose some other option.

The president-elect’s lawyers argue having the case loom over his four-year presidential term that begins on 20 January would cause “unconstitutional impediments” to his ability to govern.

Prosecutors have until 9 December to respond.

The filing references the pardon Joe Biden issued to his son on Monday, in which the president said Hunter Biden was “unfairly prosecuted” on gun and tax charges.

Mr Trump’s lawyers said: “President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice’. These comments amounted to an extraordinary condemnation of President Biden’s own DOJ [department of justice]”.

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The Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “has engaged in ‘precisely the type of political theatre’ that President Biden has condemned”, the filing added.

“This case is based on a contrived, defective, and unprecedented legal theory relating to 2017 entries in documents that were maintained hundreds of miles away from the White House where President Trump was running the country.”

The district attorney’s “disruptions to the institution of the presidency violate the presidential immunity doctrine because they threaten the functioning of the federal government,” the filing said.

The prosecutors’ “ridiculous suggestion that they could simply resume proceedings after President Trump leaves office, more than a decade after they commenced their investigation in 2018, is not an option,” the filing claimed.

Mr Trump’s lawyers also claimed the case should be thrown out because of his “extraordinary service” to the US, adding that his “civil and financial contributions to this city and the nation are too numerous to count”.

The president-elect has said he intends to nominate the lawyers who wrote the filing – Todd Blanche and Emil Bove – to top jobs in the justice department, which they criticise in the documents.