Report: White House aide wants Hegseth out
A White House aide to President Trump is reportedly enraged with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and wants the former Fox News host out of his job, according to sources. Two sources close to the White House confirmed to NOTUS that a Trump aide is '[expletive] off' about Hegseth's performance and thinks it's 'time for him to go.'
But the Pentagon claims the defense secretary has Trump's full support. 'As President Trump has said, Secretary Hegseth 'is doing a great job,'' Pentagon Chief Spokesman Sean Parnell told the Daily Mail. The defense secretary has been dogged by reports re-examining his role in 'Signalgate,' a scandal where Hegseth sent airstrike plans over the commercial messaging app while accidentally including a journalist on the sensitive thread.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic later published much of the conversation's contents , leading to the Trump administration's first major scandal of the second term and the eventual demotion of his national security adviser. This week, the Washington Post first reported that the information Hegseth sent in that Signal chat originated from a top general's email that was sent on a classified network.
The Pentagon 's internal investigator, the office of the inspector general, is investigating the debacle. Hegseth and the White House have repeatedly claimed that no classified information was sent over the encrypted messaging app. A day after the latest story broke, the defense secretary had a planned trip to Georgia.
Instead, he canceled the appearances to attend meetings at the White House, according to the report. The White House also pushed back on the report, taking aim at 'unnamed sources' and 'aides' hitting Hegseth under the cloak of anonymity.
'President Trump is extremely pleased with the work of the secretary, who has taken decisive action this week to protect DOD information technology and was crucial to the success of Operation Midnight Hammer,' White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Daily Mail, referring to the strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Despite the administration's support for Hegseth, a letter has been circulating at the Pentagon calling into question the former Fox News host's ability to lead the department. The letter is intended to 'let the American public know this guy has no clue what he's doing,' a military source told the Daily Mail this week.
Three Pentagon sources indicated that the letter could be released as early as next week . It contains full of complaints ranging from politicized decision-making to department-wide dysfunction, low morale, and a climate of paranoia driven by what they describe as Hegseth's obsession with rooting out dissent.
The three sources also pointed out Hegseth's preoccupation with optics, citing his installation of a makeup studio inside the Pentagon, his staged photo-ops lifting weights with the troops and his grooming and shaving policy for servicemen. 'He has branded himself the epitome of his so-called 'warrior ethos' that he's always talking about,' one insider said, adding that Hegseth appears to be reshaping the military into 'a cross between a sweat lodge and WWE.'
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