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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth participates in an interview outside of the White House on Mar. 21, 2025.

I supported President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard who was awarded two Bronze Stars and other commendations for his military service. Like many on the right, I hoped his warrior ethos and vocal patriotism would inject backbone into an institution bloated by bureaucracy and captured by progressive ideologues obsessed with promoting diversity, who were wasting money and dividing troops.

But what I, and many others, overlooked is now impossible to ignore. This man is dangerously unfit for one of the most sensitive and important jobs in the world. It’s been more than a month since a poll found that more Republican voters think Hegseth should resign than think he should stay. It’s deeply dismaying that President Donald Trump hasn’t ousted him yet.

I am no Democrat who wishes to weaken the president. But this is a national security emergency. Hegseth has become a danger to the very institution he was entrusted to lead.

In February, as U.S. forces were actively preparing strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, Hegseth took real-time operational strike plans, which he had received through secure military channels, and casually dumped them into two separate chats on Signal, a commercial messaging app that could have easily been hacked. One chat included the editor of The Atlantic magazine, whose phone number had apparently been added by accident. Another chat from Hegseth’s personal phone inexplicably included his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer.

Gregory F. TrevertonMarch 28, 2025

Hegseth broke the most basic rules of operational security by being cavalier with sensitive military information – and American lives, had that information fallen into the wrong hands. Confronted over his careless and inexcusable breach, Hegseth denied it, despite clear evidence, and tried to blame the media for “lies” and “hoaxes.”

Then came the revelation that Hegseth had set up in his Defense Department office what is known as a “dirty line,” an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protections, so he could use a personal computer at work. On this unsecured pipeline, according to two anonymous officials with knowledge of the line, Hegseth accessed Signal to share sensitive information outside of classified systems while U.S. aircraft were en route to their targets. That’s the digital equivalent of shouting war plans through a megaphone in a crowded train station.

Even his most vocal supporters cannot dismiss this as an honest mistake, because the insecure internet line was reportedly set up at Hegseth’s own request. Putting an insecure line in the office of the defense secretary is akin to punching a hole in a fortress. Such a line is vulnerable to spyware and hacking and doesn’t comply with recordkeeping requirements under federal law, since it’s not an official Pentagon IP address. To put it bluntly, the person entrusted with overseeing America’s defense made a conscious choice to circumvent the very protocols designed to protect the nation's sensitive military information and personnel.

From the start, Hegseth surrounded himself with loyalists, fired top Pentagon lawyers and treated seasoned experts with institutional knowledge as a liability. He reportedly tried to get access for Elon Musk – a temporary special government employee who has not been confirmed by the Senate – to more than two dozen of the most sensitive programs at the Defense Department that involve China, without seeking legal clearance. Pentagon lawyers eventually refused the request, but Hegseth either didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong or didn’t care.

Recently, three senior Hegseth aides were marched out of the Pentagon and fired in a single week in what looks like a paranoid purge. Hegseth’s former top Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot, who left his job before those firings, described “total chaos at the Pentagon.” He wrote in Politico on April 20 that “the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president.” By the end of that week, another top Hegseth aide, chief of staff Joe Kasper, left his job under a cloud. Inside the Pentagon, a climate of mistrust has seemingly set in; staffers reportedly are treating emails like state secrets, fearful of leaks, unsure who’s listening.

The Pentagon manages nuclear deterrence, oversees U.S. engagement in war zones and supports allies from the Baltics to the Pacific. It cannot be run like a cable news show. But Hegseth is acting as if it is – broadcasting instead of briefing, politicizing instead of protecting.

This is a man who seems more interested in performing for cameras than safeguarding national security. The administration claims to be slashing budgets, but the former Fox News host reportedly priced out the cost of installing a makeup studio at the Pentagon for TV appearances at what would have been tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars. At a time of real threats and real deployments, Hegseth’s priorities are clear: optics over order.

Philippe ReinesMarch 31, 2025

Hegseth came to the job with no experience in procurement, logistics or strategy. His resume was built on Fox News hits, culture war rhetoric and self-promotion. His tenure running a veterans’ organization was controversial, and there were allegations about troubling personal conduct, which he denied. I knew this and supported him anyway because I believed his ideology and instincts would compensate for his inexperience. I was wrong. Instinct without direction is recklessness. And recklessness at the Pentagon is a recipe for disaster.

The defense secretary’s job is to oversee 3.4 million people, a $2 trillion annual budget and the largest and most lethal military force in history, a role that demands discretion and discipline. Hegseth helps determine who lives, who dies and how America responds in moments of crisis. He has proven he is not qualified for this huge responsibility. So far, only one Republican in Congress, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a former Air Force general, has stood up to say what everyone is thinking: Hegseth must go.

Surely, Trump knows this. Yet instead of holding Hegseth accountable for sharing real-time attack information in two Signal chats, the president instead last Friday demoted his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, whose office had mistakenly added The Atlantic editor to one of the Signal chats in which Hegseth shared the attack plans.

The president’s job is to keep citizens safe. If he continues to shield Hegseth, Trump must be held responsible for the next security breach, the next military funeral, the next Pentagon failure. If Trump doesn’t act now, this could become his Benghazi. His Abu Ghraib. His Iran-Contra.

Hegseth had his chance and he squandered it. Now he must go.

John Mac Ghlionn is a writer whose commentary has appeared in the New York Post, The Blaze, Discourse Magazine and Newsweek, among others.

Tags: Pete Hegseth, military, Department of Defense, politics

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