Signals of distress: Pete Hegseth's Pentagon is a mess of his own making

[marmar]

Signals of distress: Pete Hegseth's Pentagon is a mess of his own making
Trump's secretary of defense shows the recklessness, lack of judgment his former Fox News co-hosts warned against

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published April 21, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) 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.

....(snip)....

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.

....(snip)....

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.

....(snip)....

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. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/21/signals-of-distress-pete-hegseths-pentagon-is-a-mess/

[BoRaGard]

1. It sucks bigly when your so-called Commander-in-Chief is

a five-time draft dodging casino hustler felon-rapist.

You know what I mean?

So Heg's Seth can just do the standard GOP thing and pass the buck.

[Lovie777]

2. I knew he and the rest of shithole's administration were going to be fuck ups................

I do dread who his replacement will be.

[underpants]

3. 3rd string JV

The most credible ones are Rubio and Bessent and they are mostly just mouthpieces now.

[allegorical oracle]

5. Fear an opening for Mike Flynn to ride in on a white horse. nt

[Prairie Gates]

4. The thing that's crazy about this is that these are all Hegseth's own people that he's feuding with

It's not some legacy bureaucrats that he's purging. It's his buddies that he brought into the Pentagon like, what, eight weeks ago?

This is a total clown show. He's firing his own friends who he just hired! It's completely bizarre. If this happened at any job where you worked you would be polishing up your resume, but in this case, we're all on the hook with this coglione because he's the Secretary of Defense! It's utterly beyond belief.

[Jit423]

6. Until a death or deaths of Americans can be soundly proved, Hegseth and ilk will continue to defy the law and

the Constitution. Trump won't fire him because then he would have to admit that he made a mistake in hiring him in the first place.