Falling on Def Ears
The official motto of the US Army is “This We’ll Defend.” After three months of chaotic, dangerous, and at times deeply embarrassing leadership by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, much of Washington is asking Trump why This is what he continues to defend. The only new weapon Hegseth has added to the Pentagon’s arsenal is the political bombshell. But, despite multiple accounts of sharing war plans with unauthorized chat group members on Signal and what the NYT (Gift Article) describes as “a run of chaos that is unmatched in the recent history of the Defense Department,” the president continues to turn a blind eye to his Def Sec’s shortcomings.
+ Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Why Trump Is Standing by Hegseth, for Now. “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared sensitive attack plans in a Signal group chat. No, not that one—a different one. Some of his top Pentagon aides have been ousted, but few in the building are sure what they were ousted for, or even by whom. And the talk in Washington revolves around who might be on the short list to replace him, even as President Donald Trump delivered a firm defense of Hegseth today while standing a few feet away from a giant bunny. That surreal sight—at the White House Easter Egg Roll this morning—seemed oddly fitting on a day when the world’s largest military was enveloped in a level of dysfunction that bordered on the comical, except for the hundreds of billions of dollars of fighter jets and tanks involved.”
+ Hegseth may eventually be ousted, but it’s worth noting a few things. One, Trump is in his authoritarian mindset and doesn’t want to acquiesce to outside (or inside) pressures like he did during his first term. Two, during that first term, most of those who left the administration had pretty terrible things to say about the administration. Three, it’s hard not to see that a goal of this administration has been to weaken American institutions and prowess while fixating on DEI, book banning, and attacks on political opponents. By those standards, Hegseth, with a heavy dose of media razzle dazzle, seems to be following his marching orders to a T(rump).
