MAGA outlet's Pentagon correspondent criticized Hegseth. And then she was fired, she says
Gabrielle Cuccia criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's crackdown on press access at the Pentagon. And then, she said, she was fired.
Cuccia was briefly the chief Pentagon correspondent for the small and staunchly pro-Trump TV channel One America News, OAN for short.
A self-proclaimed 'MAGA girl,' Cuccia positioned herself as a proudly conservative voice among the normally nonpartisan Pentagon press corps. But she grew perturbed by Hegseth's actions against the press.
In a post on her personal Substack account on Tuesday, she wrote that the Defense Department's recent move to make vast parts of the Pentagon off-limits to journalists was a 'troubling shift.' She heaped doubt on the Defense Department's rationale for the restrictions. And she questioned why Hegseth hasn't held any formal press briefings since being sworn in.
'This article isn't to serve as a tearing down' of Hegseth, she wrote. 'This is me wanting to keep MAGA alive.'
Evidently, someone disagreed. On Thursday, 'I was asked to turn in my Pentagon badge to my bureau chief,' Cuccia said in response to CNN's inquiry about her status there. On Friday, she said, she was fired.
Cuccia declined to answer followup questions. OAN president Charles Herring did not respond to CNN's request for comment, including about whether any Pentagon officials complained to OAN about Cuccia's Substack post.
Cuccia served in the Trump White House in 2017 and 2018 and later reported from the White House for OAN, then spent several years as a contractor, according to her LinkedIn page. One of her right-wing TV appearances went viral last year when she repeated Trump's claims of 2020 election fraud on Newsmax. The anchor cut her off, most likely due to allegations being made during the segment.
Whether through fiery TV segments or Instagram posts posing with firearms, Cuccia was public about her MAGA bonafides. So she was a natural fit to return to OAN earlier this year.
In February, the Defense Department took away NBC's longtime workspace at the Pentagon and gave the office to OAN — part of a broader push by the Pentagon to seek out pro-Trump coverage and sideline traditional news outlets.
OAN suddenly needed to staff the Pentagon, so Cuccia was brought aboard as chief Pentagon correspondent. She personally renovated the office space into what she called a 'Liberty Lounge' and chronicled the process on social media.
According to her Substack post, she soon grew skeptical of the Defense Department's dealings with the press corps.
Echoing the concerns of the Pentagon Press Association — which Cuccia said she is not officially a part of, since 'again hello I am MAGA' — she pointed out that the Pentagon's top spokesman has only held one briefing since January.
'This Administration, to my surprise, also locked the doors to the Pentagon Briefing room, a protocol that was never in place in prior Administrations, and a door that is never locked for press at the White House,' she wrote.
'The Commander-in-Chief welcomes the hard questions… and yes, even the dumb ones. Why won't the Secretary of Defense do the same?'
Her nuanced assessment of the Pentagon's press crackdown totaled 3,000 words. It aligned with the slogan that she printed on tank tops and sold on Etsy last year: 'Love your country, not your government.'
The primary trigger for her post seemed to be the Defense Department's May 23 memo restricting journalists from key parts of the Pentagon without an official escort.
'For decades — across both Republican and Democratic administrations — reporters have operated in these spaces responsibly, including in the wake of 9/11, without raising red flags from leadership over operational security,' she wrote.
The memo indicated that further restrictions are likely in the coming weeks, including a pledge to protect military secrets and tougher scrutiny of press credentialing.
'Without press, we by default have to assume that our government relaying information to us, is true,' Cuccia wrote, calling that attitude 'the antithesis of what we believe in.'
On Friday she changed her X bio to 'former chief Pentagon correspondent.'
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