I know it may be impossible to accept, but it turns out that a weekend cable news host with a long record of personal misconduct may not actually be capable of leading the most powerful military on earth after all. Unfortunately, it does appear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not living up to what the president and the entire Republican Party apparently believed was his vast potential based upon his “central casting” good looks and white supremacist tattoos. He’s in trouble again and this time it’s coming from inside the house.
Hegseth had already shown the recklessness and lack of judgment many of his former co-workers at Fox News, hardly a bastion of wokeness, said worried them when he was nominated. (He was known to have a very messy personal life with excessive drinking, affairs, baby mamas and even a rape charge.) He promised the GOP senators who confirmed him that he would not take a drink while serving as secretary of defense and there is no evidence he’s broken it. But his judgment is even worse than his critics anticipated.
First of all, he appears to be obsessed with his Fox News culture war issues, particularly DEI, and spends an awful lot of time worrying about things like physical fitness rather than the big picture. His first act as defense secretary was to fire the top women and Black leaders in the chain of command, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whose record of accomplishment was stellar. His directives to purge the military of transgender people and every reference to race, sex or ethnicity have resulted in some extremely embarrassing misfires such as removal of baseball great Jackie Robinson’s and the Navajo code-talker’s web pages.
In fairness, as odious as Hegseth’s eagerness to go about it might be, that agenda is Donald Trump’s as much as his own. The problem is that he’s so ridiculously underqualified for the real job of running the Pentagon that the whole place is starting to come apart — and it’s happening at the hands of Hegseth’s own closest allies who are apparently at each others’ throats.
We all know about the Signalgate scandal in which Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz put together a group chat on an unsecure app and accidentally added the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, who naturally reported it. Aside from the idiocy of the move itself, one of the most egregious screw-ups on that chat was the efense secretary sharing imminent war plans. The administration tried to finesse it by saying that war plans aren’t classified, which is pathetic, but they managed to quiet the calls for Hegseth to resign. But last night the New York Times reported yet another chat, this one at Hegseth’s instigation, and it’s even worse than the other one.
Reportedly, Hegseth had an ongoing group called “Defense | Team Huddle,” which also chatted over Signal, with whom he also shared the war plans. Only this group included his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer, the latter two having been given some kind of make-work jobs at the Pentagon. And Hegseth used his personal phone this time to spill the beans.
Hegseth has been criticized for bringing his wife along to meetings with foreign military leaders where sensitive information was exchanged so it would seem that he considers her a top adviser. Why he thought it was appropriate to inform her, his brother and former personal lawyer about war plans is a mystery. Again, the man has a serious judgment problem.
You may wonder where the New York Times got this information. We don’t know for sure but it’s not too hard to guess. There has been a very puzzling purge of Hegseth’s closest advisers over the last few days. Politico reported this week that former senior adviser Dan Caldwell, former deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the deputy defense secretary’s former chief of staff, were “under investigation for a series of leaks that included reports about Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon, military plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.” Caldwell, Selnick and Carroll all say that’s not true and that they were not among those given polygraph tests.
You will note that they do not defend Hegseth, their former good friend, however. The skuttlebut is that they clashed with Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff. But he too recently left his position. Right now, Hegseth has no chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, or senior adviser, Politico reported:
“There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” said a senior defense official. “Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.”
You might also say that Pete Hegseth can’t manage his way out of a garbage bag. This turmoil is caused by his closest staff who are all at each others’ throats. The buck should stop with Pete, don’t you think?
Meanwhile, another of his close pals, a true blue MAGA follower named John Ullyot who formerly worked as the Pentagon spokesman, wrote an op-ed in Politico on Sunday night saying the Pentagon has been in total chaos for the last month and that it’s hard to see how Hegseth survives. He claims more bombshells are on the way.
If you wonder how Hegseth has responded to all this, I think this says it all:
I recall that when Hegseth was confirmed there were some old hand types saying “good luck” when people would say he was going to come in and totally revamp the Pentagon in Trump’s image. They pointed out that it’s the biggest bureaucracy in the world with many decades of experience fighting bureaucratic battles. I can’t speculate what happened here, but if I had to bet I’d bet on the Pentagon over Hegseth. Normally, this would bother me but in this case I’m afraid I have to hope that the Pentagon bureaucracy wins. Pete Hegseth is a monumental national security risk.
Read more
about the continuing saga of Signalgate
