Pete Hegseth hosted Fox News shows for years before becoming Donald Trump’s defence secretary.
But on Tuesday morning, he took to the conservative US cable network to mount a defence against a torrent of criticism about his actions at the helm of the Pentagon and the turmoil that has embroiled what is arguably the world’s most powerful military agency under his leadership.
“We’re focused on recruiting, on rooting out DEI, on securing our south-west border, on the president’s agenda, and it’s going very well at the Pentagon,” Hegseth said. “And I’m proud of it.”
Despite the bullish comments, after just two months in office the ground under the 44-year-old Hegseth has grown increasingly shaky in recent days, with revelations that he had discussed sensitive military information with family members on the Signal messaging app, just weeks after facing criticism for posting about the operation in a separate message group.
He has also purged some of his top aides from the Pentagon following an investigation into leaks at the department, leaving its leadership in disarray.
John Ullyot, a former Pentagon spokesperson under Hegseth and a White House official during Trump’s first term, wrote that “the last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration”, in a stinging op-ed in Politico this week.
The chaos at the agency has forced Trump and top White House officials to rush to Hegseth’s defence in an effort to protect both the former TV host and the president. If the top cabinet appointee were to be forced out it would be an embarrassment for the White House, and would trigger a difficult search for a replacement who could pass muster with the Senate.
But with Hegseth left in charge, there are concerns that Trump will have a defence department that is adrift when he is trying to press ahead with ambitious foreign policy goals, including brokering a peace deal in Ukraine, reforming Nato, stabilising the Middle East and grappling with the risk of a new escalation with China.
“[Hegseth’s] lack of experience is a huge demerit,” said Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, a think-tank that advocates for a less interventionist US foreign policy. “It makes it more likely that he’s just going to struggle with internal management issues, rather than really setting policy and leading the Pentagon.”
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser during his first term, on Tuesday wrote on X: “Hegseth‘s dysfunction tells the rest of the Pentagon and our partners around the world that the secretary of defense’s office is not serious.”
The vast majority of Republicans are still standing by Hegseth, some enthusiastically. But Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican congressman and former Air Force general, broke ranks in an interview with Politico on Monday, saying the defence secretary’s conduct was “unacceptable” and he would not “tolerate” it if he were president.
Democrats have pounced on the turmoil at the Pentagon, warning that it is a threat to America’s national security.
“The Pentagon is a disaster right now . . . this is a guy who is reckless and foolish and everybody around him knows it,” Don Beyer, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Virginia whose district includes the defence department headquarters, told the Financial Times.
“Our Nato allies . . . have to be really questioning what’s happening at the Pentagon when they see somebody like Hegseth leading it. In the meantime, in China and Russia, they have to be thrilled,” he added.
Hegseth was one of Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks in his second term. Accusations that he was unqualified for the post, along with allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking, nearly sank his confirmation by the Senate. Deadlock in the upper chamber was only broken when JD Vance, the vice-president, intervened to cast a tiebreaking vote.
Hegseth’s tenure at the defence department started with an early purge of top military officers, including replacing General CQ Brown with General Dan Caine as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, in an effort to reshape the agency.
But the former TV host’s authority suffered a big blow in March when a Signal chat involving top US officials discussing details of the military strike against Houthi targets in Yemen was accidentally shared with a journalist. “Godspeed to our warriors,” Hegseth wrote as he described the details of the operation.
Hegseth has shared the blame for that breach with Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser who erroneously included the reporter from the Atlantic magazine in the Signal chain. But the revelations of a second Signal message group that included the defence secretary’s wife discussing the Yemeni strikes has compounded the pressure on him.
Late on Tuesday, NBC reported that the information shared by Hegseth on the message group including his family members had been sent to the defence secretary on a secure system by General Michael Kurilla, the commander of US Central Command.
Meanwhile, an increasing preoccupation with internal leaks has led Hegseth to oust three top aides — Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll — that he had brought with him to the defence department.
The trio said in a joint statement that they were the subject of “baseless attacks” and had not even been told what they were being investigated for. But Hegseth on Tuesday doubled down on his former allies, telling Fox News there was “sufficient evidence to believe that they or others near them were party to leaking”. He also reassigned Joe Kasper, his chief of staff, to a different role within the Pentagon, adding to the confusion.
Meanwhile, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, came to Hegseth’s defence on Tuesday, telling reporters he was simply the object of a “smear campaign”. “The secretary of defence is doing a tremendous job. And he is bringing monumental change in the Pentagon. And there’s a lot of people in the city who reject monumental change,” she said.
But Friedman, who said he shared some of Trump’s national security goals, said the “lack of policy direction” emerging from the Pentagon was disturbing.
“Hegseth doesn’t seem to have very many ideas about what he wants to do, other than complain about the media and wokeness,” he said.
Additional reporting by Myles McCormick in Washington
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