UPDATED with Hegseth comment: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Donald Trump “stands strongly” behind Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, even amid a new bombshell report and a scathing op-ed from a former top Pentagon spokesperson.
“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and against the monumental change you are trying to implement,” Leavitt said Monday on Fox & Friends.
Hegseth, appearing at the White House Easter Egg Roll, himself said, “What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and a bunch of hit pieces come out.” He then went into an extended rant about the media, pointing at reporters and calling them “full of hoax-sters.”
On Sunday, the New York Times and other outlets reported that Hegseth, the former co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, shared details of U.S. attack plans on Houthi rebels in Yemen on another Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer. Hegseth had shared those plans on another Signal group, that with top Trump administration officials and, mistakenly, The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.
Also on Sunday, John Ullyot, a Trump loyalist who served as chief Pentagon spokesperson, wrote in an op-ed in Politico that the “last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.”
“There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week, key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately,” wrote Ullyot, while all but predicting that Hegseth’s days are numbered.
On Friday, three senior aides — Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll — were fired, with media reports that they were involved in leaking sensitive information. But the next day, they released a statement saying that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” Ullyot wrote that “Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.”
Trump himself has not yet commented, but Leavitt said blamed the situation on unnamed Pentagon officials. “They are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media,” she said.
