A clash over a promotion puts Hegseth at odds with his generals
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Hegseth met with Sims one final time but refused to budge. Sims is expected to retire in the coming months after 34 years in the military, officials said. Through a spokesperson, Sims and Caine declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on Hegseth's role.
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The standoff over his promotion reflects an ongoing clash between Hegseth's highly partisan worldview, in which he has written that the Democratic Party 'really does hate America,' and the longstanding tradition of an apolitical military that pledges an oath to the Constitution.
Hegseth's actions could shape the military's top ranks for years to come. His insistence on absolute loyalty, backed with repeated threats of polygraphs, also creates uncertainty and mistrust that threaten to undermine the readiness and effectiveness of the force, officials said.
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The tension between top military officers and their civilian leaders has been persistent since the earliest days of Trump's second term, when senior administration officials ordered the removal of Milley's portrait from a Pentagon hallway.
Caine, who pressed Hegseth on Sims's behalf, got the job of Joint Chiefs chair after Hegseth and Trump fired General Charles Q. Brown Jr., his predecessor. Hegseth accused Brown, who is Black, of prioritizing diversity over the combat effectiveness of the force.
Also removed during the first months of the new administration were the first woman to command the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti; the first woman to command the Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan; Hegseth's senior military assistant, Lieutenant General Jennifer Short; and the US military representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. All were dismissed as part of a campaign to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion from the military and restore what Hegseth has described as a 'warrior ethos.'
Hegseth also recently withdrew the nomination of Rear Admiral Michael 'Buzz' Donnelly to lead the Navy's Seventh Fleet in Japan -- its largest overseas force -- amid reports in conservative media that seven years earlier the admiral had allowed a drag performance to take place on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.
The decision not to promote Sims, who is white, seems unrelated to any issues of race or gender. Rather, the general's career seems to have become tangled up in broader suspicions about leaks and a mistrust of senior military officers that have defined much of Hegseth's first six months on the job.
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Hegseth, a former Fox News host and an Iraq War veteran, came to the Pentagon with little managerial experience. Since his arrival, a series of firings and resignations in his inner circle have left him with only a skeleton staff of civilian aides to run his office. He has been without a permanent chief of staff since late April. Ricky Buria, a recently retired Marine colonel who has forged a close relationship with Hegseth, has been serving in the critical role.
But White House officials, who have concerns about Buria's competence and qualifications, have blocked Hegseth from formally appointing him to the job, officials said. Buria, meanwhile, has clashed repeatedly with many of Hegseth's closest aides and some officers in the Pentagon.
This spring, Eric Geressy, a retired sergeant major who served with Hegseth in Iraq and now advises him in the Pentagon, threatened to quit after an argument with Buria, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The rift was reported earlier by The Washington Post. Geressy briefly went to his home in Florida before Hegseth persuaded him to return, officials said.
Hegseth is also still contending with a review by the Pentagon's inspector general related to his disclosure on the Signal messaging app of the precise timing of US fighter jets' airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen in March.
The office has received evidence that the information that Hegseth put in the commercial chat app came from a classified Central Command document, according to two US officials with knowledge of the review. The classified origins of the information were reported earlier by the Post.
The infighting, investigations, and personnel churn have strained Hegseth's ability to manage critical operations in the Pentagon. Hegseth found himself in the crosshairs this month after Democrats and Republicans in Congress blamed him for pausing critical shipments of interceptors and other arms to Ukraine without sufficiently consulting with the White House or the State Department.
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The suspension was particularly jarring because just days earlier Trump had said he was open to selling more weapons to Ukraine after meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in The Hague.
It also left the impression that Hegseth and his top aides had failed to keep the president and senior White House officials in the loop.
As aides to Hegseth traded blame, and then tried to play down the impact of the pause, Trump dramatically overruled the Pentagon, saying he was unhappy with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The frustration with Hegseth is seeping out. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who cast the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth, this month called him ill-suited to lead the Pentagon.
'With the passing of time, I think it's clear he's out of his depth as a manager of a large, complex organization,' Tillis told CNN.
For now, Hegseth's missteps do not seem to have hurt his standing with the person who matters most: Trump.
Like Trump, Hegseth had a career in television before joining the administration and relishes the performative aspects of his job. As defense secretary, he regularly posts videos that show him exercising with troops. The photo ops -- known inside the Pentagon as 'troop touches' -- are a central part of almost all his public appearances, current and former aides said.
Several officials have complained that the photos and videos -- including one that he posted from Omaha Beach in Normandy in which he joins Army Rangers carrying a soldier on a stretcher as part of D-Day remembrances -- are distractions that serve primarily to bolster his image.
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Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said that Hegseth retained Trump's 'full confidence' and cited the 'critical role' he played 'in ensuring the flawless execution' of the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June.
Current and former military officials said that Trump largely bypassed Hegseth in the days leading up to the strikes and instead relied on Caine and General Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of Central Command, for counsel.
But officials with knowledge of the president's thinking said Trump especially admired his defense secretary's combative response at a news conference to reports questioning the effectiveness of the attack.
In the wake of staff dismissals and a series of negative stories about Hegseth's performance in the job, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, offered a window into how Hegseth views the department he now runs.
'This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change you are trying to implement,' she said.
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