I’ve Been With Trump Since 2016. Hegseth Should Resign.
· The Atlantic
“All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times.” The loud rebuke of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his entourage by an Army sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veterans Day was the latest embarrassment of the defense chief’s tenure. For nearly two years, Hegseth has treated the Pentagon as a backdrop for self-promotion. He would serve President Trump best by stepping down before Democrats use him to help jam up the president’s agenda during Trump’s final two years in office.
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I do not say that lightly. I first worked for Trump on his 2016 campaign in Trump Tower. I served in his White House as a deputy assistant to the president and chief spokesperson for the National Security Council. In Trump’s second term, I volunteered to help Hegseth stand up his press office by serving him for a short time as a senior adviser and spokesperson. Twenty years ago, I was spokesperson for the Senate Armed Services Committee when another defense secretary became the face of an unpopular war and a millstone around the neck of President George W. Bush.
As I write in my new memoir of my years working for Trump, loyalty in his second term has usually been measured by how loudly an appointee defends him. But real loyalty means sometimes telling the president what he does not want to hear, including about yourself. An appointee whose missteps are hurting the president needs to think hard about whether he has become a political liability and offer to step aside when that’s the case.
That duty begins before an appointee accepts the job. If the president offered me the post of deputy attorney general, the loyal answer would be, “Thank you, Mr. President. I’m flattered. But you might want someone with a law degree.” Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend co-host and major in the Minnesota National Guard who had never run a large organization, should have known that he was not qualified to lead the largest department in the federal government. He was confirmed 51 to 50, with the vice president breaking the tie. A nominee who squeaks in on that margin has every reason to lower the volume. He turned it up instead.
[Tom Nichols: Pete Hegseth lashes out]
On January 3, Democrats will take firm control of the House. The 211–204 vote to shelve an impeachment resolution this week, with 11 Democrats not present, was a reprieve for Hegseth, not a vindication. Whether or not Democrats impeach him next year, they will have the gavels and the subpoena power, and every hearing on Hegseth will be a week the White House spends doing something other than advancing its agenda.
Hegseth is the least qualified defense secretary in modern memory. Voters have noticed: 32 percent approve and 57 percent disapprove of his performance, according to a Quinnipiac poll from September. He has been the Cabinet’s most visible champion of a war in Iran that has cost more than a dozen American lives, closed the Strait of Hormuz, and burned through nearly 80 percent of our THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptors.
He has turned the military into a stage in the culture wars. At Marine Corps Base Quantico in September, before an audience the Pentagon had screened based on waist-to-height standards, he said: “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” He added, “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.” He films workouts with troops and posts them to official accounts. He planned to livestream the firing-squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter until Trump called off the macabre spectacle.
[Read: Democrats are ready to run Hegseth ‘out of town’]
He has pushed out top military leaders and two of the three service secretaries the president appointed, Dan Driscoll and John Phelan. Two of his closest advisers were marched out of the Pentagon over leak accusations that went nowhere. He undermined the chain of command by intervening in at least two investigations into dangerous low-altitude flights. He shared prestrike details of a U.S. operation in Yemen over Signal with his wife, his brother, and his lawyer, which the Pentagon’s inspector general found had risked “potential harm to U.S. pilots.” In September 2025, a follow-up, or “double tap,” strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage, after which The Washington Post reported that Hegseth had given a verbal order to “kill everybody.” He denies making the order, but lawmakers in both parties have warned that it could be a war crime. Each of these is a hearing waiting to happen.
I have seen how this kind of circus ends. In 2006, Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in a midterm dominated by another unpopular war in the Middle East. Then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld read the political mood and stepped down rather than weaken his boss and his party by hanging on. Bush replaced him with Robert Gates, whose low-key professionalism steadied the Pentagon. Rumsfeld’s departure was an act of loyalty.
Hegseth has chosen the opposite path. This week, at his first press conference in six months, he shouted scripted bromides into the cameras for his customary audience of one, arguing that he should keep his job. When a defense secretary has to make a public case that he is not an embarrassment to the president, he has already lost the battle.
Hegseth awarded a medal to the sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier after a public backlash. But it should not take a soldier to remind a secretary of defense about the decorum his office demands. The president deserves better, as do the members of our military.