The Pentagon is undoubtedly at a low point.
Geographically speaking, that’s always been true. The headquarters of the Department of Defense sits in a basin in the floodplain along the Potomac River. The surrounding hills of Arlington loom over the building, while tens of thousands of daily commuters zoom between Virginia and the District of Columbia on the highways that soar over and around the Pentagon complex. When it was constructed, sand and gravel were dredged from the river to help reinforce the foundation and prevent the architectural symbol of American military might from sinking into the swamp.
But all the concrete and rebar in the world couldn’t stop the sinking feeling inside the Pentagon these days. Chaos and upheaval plague the office of the Secretary of Defense as the fallout from last month’s “Signalgate” revelations persists. All of it seems to stem from the management style—or lack thereof—of Pete Hegseth. At least one Republican House member is already calling for Hegseth to step down, and despite President Donald Trump’s defense of his Defense secretary, NPR reported Monday that the White House is looking for a replacement.
It has been less than a month since The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed Hegseth had shared sensitive operational details about an upcoming military strike on Yemen in a chat on the Signal app to which Goldberg had been inadvertently added. Now the New York Times reports that on March 15, the day of the strike, Hegseth shared those details with at least one other Signal chat on his private phone. The chat included Hegseth’s wife, his brother Phil (a Pentagon liaison official), and his personal attorney, Tim Parlatore, who was then just recently installed as the Navy commander for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. These people, the Times drolly reported, “were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation.”
That embarrassing revelation produced a non-denial denial from Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and a shockingly tone-deaf defense of Hegseth from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said Monday morning the Times report was “what happens when the entire Pentagon” is working against the secretary. (An official Defense Department Twitter account posted the video of Leavitt.)
Regardless of the administration’s spin, the story is just the latest indication that Hegseth, the former Fox & Friends Weekend host who needed Vice President J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote to win Senate confirmation, may be in over his head. As John Ullyot, who briefly served as a Pentagon spokesman, put it in a Politico op-ed published Sunday, “the building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”
In the last week, Hegseth has fired most of his inner circle of advisers, ostensibly in response to an investigation into leaks. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff, who called for the investigation, is also reportedly leaving for another post at the department. (Ullyot insisted in his op-ed that he left voluntarily, though independent reporting has suggested otherwise.) Meanwhile, two people with knowledge of the department’s inner functions say much of the policy work there has ground to a halt, with decision-makers among the Pentagon’s civil servants unclear about how to implement President Donald Trump’s agenda without more direction from the secretary.
“Every day, people have to make a variety of decisions, big and small, about programs. Do we proceed with this or not with that? Should we test this now or test it later?” said Eric Edelman, the former top policy official at the Defense Department under President George W. Bush, who told me he detects “a high degree of fear and paranoia” from career officials in the building. “All sorts of issues come up, and nobody’s willing to do anything because they’re afraid it might be the wrong thing, because in this atmosphere, it could be portrayed as not being part of the president’s agenda.”
Part of that inertia is thanks to Hegseth’s order for an eight percent cut to the defense budget with a vague promise to redirect funding toward other Pentagon priorities. But that instruction is the exception for Hegseth, who spends a lot more time than his predecessors in the job on social media and doing television hits. Some in the building have taken to calling him the “influencer secretary.”
Indeed, the social media accounts for Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer, portray a man particularly interested in living up to Trump’s idea of a “central casting” head of the defense department. He frequently posts photos and videos of himself working out alongside active-duty military personnel or otherwise showing off his physical skills. He’s a frequent guest on cable news, particularly on the network he left just months ago, and he uses his broadcasting skills to push back on negative stories forcefully, if not substantively.
Whether Twitter posts and Fox News hits will save Hegseth remains to be seen, though the report that the White House is already looking for a successor is not a good sign that the president has much confidence in him. But while Trump has been known to float personnel changes to his Cabinet in casual conversations, it’s possible that the knock-down, drag-out fight to confirm Hegseth to the job may make it that much harder for the president to abandon his defense secretary.
Yet it was the substance of that confirmation battle—allegations that Hegseth had been abusive to women, a possible drinking problem, and the mismanagement of a veterans organization he led—that might have indicated how his tenure at the Pentagon was likely to go. The 50 Republican senators who voted to confirm Hegseth can’t say they weren’t warned.
