By far, the most extreme, controversial and risky Cabinet appointment by President Trump (well, at least until Matt Gaetz dropped out) was the one that put Fox News personality Pete Hegseth in charge of the Defense Department. EA declared the nomination irresponsible at the time, and nothing that has transpired since has changed that assessment. Loyalty is wonderful, but competence is essential. Now NPR is reporting that “The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth.” The source is a U.S. official “who was not authorized to speak publicly.”
The report makes sense, and if true, it is good and encouraging news. A competent leader recognizes mistakes and moves to fix them rather than digging in and compounding the adverse consequences. The fact that this particular blunder by Trump was throbbingly obvious from the outset doesn’t alter the fact that fixing it as soon as the need to do so becomes undeniable is still the responsible course of action.
The Defense Secretary, incredibly, is again being accused of sharing classified information in a Signal messaging app group chat, this one including his wife, brother, and lawyer. Hegseth reportedly used his personal smartphone while detailing minute-by-minute classified information about airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. This occurred March during the same period in which Hegseth shared similar details with top White House officials in a different Signal chat group that somehow included a virulently anti-Trump progressive journalist.
When baseball managers are in serious trouble during the season, the kiss of death is usually the dreaded “vote of confidence” from the team owner or general manager. This is essentially what President Trump gave Hegseth yesterday, saying, “He’s doing a great job — ask the Houthis how he’s doing!” Meanwhile, Hegseth is employing the Clinton Three-Step (“Deny, deny, deny”) and White House Paid Liar Karoline Leavitt is doing her job, posting on Twitter/X that President Trump “stands strongly” behind Hegseth.
But the evidence of a mess at the Pentagon goes beyond the Signal chats. Three other Pentagon advisers, Colin Carroll, Dan Caldwell, and Darin Selnick, the latter two long-time Hegseth associates, were escorted out of the Pentagon last week and accused of leaking information to the press. The three then issued a joint tweet calling their dismissal “unconscionable” and saying they have not even been told what they stand accused of leaking. “All three of us served our country honorably in uniform — for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, based on our collective service, we understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it,” they wrote. The statement was a classic of the D.C. genre of “non denial denial.” Also last week, Defense Department spokesperson John Ullyot resigned and wrote an op-ed declaring the Pentagon in a “full-blown meltdown.”
If Trump moves quickly to replace his worst nominee before he does too much damage, it will be an encouraging sign after the Biden administration’s reluctance to fire anyone no matter how incompetent. A nagging fear lurks, however. Washington Post editor of legend and lore, Ben Bradley, liked to tell the story of how he reported, thanks to several sources, that Lyndon Johnson was going to fire J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI. LBJ then announced that Hoover was being retained as FBI Director for life, and sent Bradley a “fuck you” message through back-channels. “Great,” one insider told Bradley. “You’ve stuck us with Hoover forever.”
I could see Trump pulling an LBJ just to spite NPR. Let us hope, for once, he resists an urge.
Ethics Alarms 
“chat, this one including his wife, brother and lawyer”
Oxford comma, anyone?
Yup. Good place for one. Fixed.
Normally, I’d be all over the Oxford comma, but this popped into my mind instead: in this day and age, all three items could reference the same person…
Hence the need for the Oxford comma!
Wow! I had no idea that that particular comma actually had a name (and a history). I tend to use them, but mainly out of a feeling that it’s more consistent to use that final comma.
Learn something new and interesting every day.
Wait, (as a staunch punctuation minimalist) what’s the ambiguity without the Oxford comma?
“Wife, brother, and lawyer” makes it clear that three different people are being referenced, while “wife, brother and lawyer” can be read as “wife, brother (and lawyer).
I’ve noticed that PJ Media is spinning for Hesgeth, stating that all these fired personnel are pulling the fired-personnel thing, namely trashing their former employer. Again, I take issue with the mentality that exists on both sides of the aisle, that our side can do no wrong, and their side can do no right.
Query: Is this an inside job by the Deep Staters at the Pentagon? Query two: Is NPR to be believed regarding anything they’re reporting, particularly D.C. inside baseball stuff? 3. Is Hegseth just the first just the first Trump appointee to be run out of a job by the concerted efforts of the AUC?
Regarding#3: it is hardly worth giving the AUC credit when ALL of the rope to hang Hegsith with was self supplied.
After all of the history of misconduct with classified information by Hillary and Biden, this isn’t a double standard Trump needed.
But is any information that comes out of the Pentagon reliable? Has he been set up?
how did we find out about the second signal chat? Did someone on the chat squeal? Was that chat deliberately fed to chum controversy?
Apparently David Frum or an associate of his reviewing all of the chats noted that these other people were on some of the chats.
I think even if it is a AUC plan, he should still be fired for security breaches. If he doesn’t understand the technology he shouldn’t use it for very obvious reasons.
I’d quibble with calling David Frum a progressive. He is a neocon through and through. He comes to the anti Trump camp as a die hard Bush / Cheney loyalist. He’s really only welcome at The Atlantic because he’s so fervently anti Trump. He’s only favored by the left as a useful idiot like Liz Cheney is.
I expect once Trump is banished from politics or Trump dies, Frum will be cast out into the wilderness because he is no longer useful. Just like Liz Cheney is now.
On the one hand, this latest Signal story seemed to me to mainly be piling on from the original back in March. They happened at basically the same time — it’s not like there was this big controversy over Signal and then a month later Hegseth does the same thing. I mean, he may have done so but that isn’t what they’re talking about here.
So I tend to look on this as more of a compound lapse, if you want to regard it as such more than a serial transgression.
That said, Hegseth was never my favorite nominee. I was and am willing to cut him some slack if he can get the job done.
So, is he getting the job done? Is it too early to tell? Is recruitment up, are the armed services moving back to a war fighting attitude rather than a DEI experiment? Most of all, is DoD moving to modernize, upgrade, augment our forces to meet the serious threats we may be facing?
I don’t know the answer to that. It does strike me that with all the excitement of Musk, DOGE, and the like Hegseth may have had a chance to mostly operate under the radar so far.
So for me the jury is out on Hegseth. These groups chats aren’t a good look, but what’s really going on in the Pentagon?
I believe the Secretary’s name is misspelled in the title.
Thank you. What’s going on here, you may well ask. THIS:
1. Ever since Hegseth was nominated, my brain has confounded him with former Boston Red Sox pitcher Joe Heckseth, whose name was pronounced the same, or sounded like that. The confusion is raised every time I have to think about the Sec, of Defense, which I would rather not do.
2. I have been caught by headline typos frequently, because I often forget to check them.
3. All yesterday I was squeezed to get any posts up because I was being crunched by deadlines left and right in my ethics business. That also resulted in more than the usual number of typos seaking through my proofing, which is never all that good at its best.
4. Official Ethics Alarms vigilante a-hole “A Friend” snottily alluded to a typo in the headline in an unauthorized I immediately deleted, since he is banned here, but he didn’t have the decency to say what the typos was, being a troll. I looked at the headline, #1 above kicked in as usual, and I thought, “No, there’s no typo.”
5. So now you know. FIXED>
I make my own share of typos, too. It happens to everyone, especially when they are pressed for time.
Actually, there’s a name for it: Marshall Disease, commonly known as Sawks Derangement Syndrome. It’s known to actually rewire its victims’ brains.
Good to know. And there is yet to be a cure.
Fortunately, it does not shorten its victims’ life spans.
https://justthenews.com/government/security/hold-nsa-mike-waltz-gives-ringing-endorsement-hegseth-traces-signal-gate-biden