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. An organization dependent on clear lines of communication was in a state of confusion, while questions surrounding Hegseth’s fitness for the post that first surfaced during his contentious confirmation became relevant again.
Their revival was thanks to revelations about Hegseth’s wider-than-previously-known use of the nongovernmental messaging app Signal to communicate sensitive war plans, this time to an audience that included his wife, his brother, and his personal lawyer. The new disclosure, reported yesterday evening by The New York Times, prompted the first Republican lawmaker to call for Hegseth’s ouster. And it came just days after a meltdown at the Pentagon that led to the abrupt departures of several top senior aides, one of whom took the extraordinary step of openly questioning Hegseth’s fitness for his post and calling for his dismissal.
[Read: The double standard at the center of the Signal debacle]
Trump spoke with Hegseth late last night and, for now, is willing to support him, two senior White House aides and three close outside advisers told me on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. But some in the White House and the Pentagon have begun speculating about Hegseth’s shelf life and have even begun circulating the names of possible replacements, according to one of the White House aides and one of the outside allies.
The overall mood in the West Wing has grown dark. Trump and his inner circle are frustrated at having to revisit a damaging storyline that they believe slowed their momentum last month, the sources told me, even as the president remains loath to fire a Cabinet member under pressure.
“Here we go again. Just a waste of time. He is doing a great job,” Trump said of Hegseth at the Easter event, telling reporters that he has “great confidence” in the secretary of defense. “Ask the Houthis how he is doing.”
All of last week, the White House had told staffers to hammer home its messaging about deportations, immigration, even Greenland—really, any issue that could distract from an economy left quaking by Trump’s trade war–inducing tariffs.
Signalgate: The Sequel is not what they had in mind.
[Read: Here are the attack plans that Trump’s advisers shared on Signal]
It was questionable Signal use that ignited the first major scandal of the second Trump term. The editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed last month that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had accidentally added him to a Signal group chat to coordinate U.S. plans to strike the Houthi rebels in Yemen. On March 15, Hegseth, a former Fox News host, used the chat to share details of the Houthi strikes, including precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. The revelations rattled Washington, with bipartisan condemnation for the use of an app to share information that could have put U.S. service members’ lives in jeopardy. But although Trump was privately annoyed at the sloppiness, the White House publicly pushed back, making semantic arguments over whether “war plans” or “attack plans” were texted and implausibly denying that any classified information had been shared.
The president refused to give in to pressure from Democrats or the media to fire any of the offending officials. A White House official told me at the time, “The last thing he wants to do is give you guys [in the media] a scalp.” Since then, Trump world has used the phrase no scalps repeatedly. The unlikely rallying cry was texted to me today both by one of the senior officials and by one of the outside advisers; the adviser told me that much of Trump’s inner circle wants to avoid any high-profile firings in the first 100 days of the administration.
Capitol Hill Republicans rallied around the administration last month, but this time, one has broken rank. Representative Don Bacon, a prominent member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico that the chaos now on display at the Pentagon is one reason that many Hill Republicans had been privately uneasy with Hegseth’s nomination in the first place. “I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” said Bacon, a former Air Force general. “I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern.” Bacon went on to say that although he wasn’t making specific recommendations to Trump, he found Hegseth’s management “unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.”
With Congress still out for Easter break, most other GOP lawmakers seem to be lying low and trying to avoid crossing Trump by commenting on Hegseth. A number of Democrats, though, were eager to put out statements calling for Hegseth’s dismissal. “How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f*cking liar, he is a threat to our national security?” Senator Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran and a member of the Armed Services Committee, wrote on X.
[Read: The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans]
During his nomination fight earlier this year, Hegseth faced questions about his alcohol use, personal conduct, and management ability. That confirmation battle reminded some of the president’s supporters of the push to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The MAGA movement touted Hegseth’s combat experience and threatened holdout senators with primary challengers if they didn’t support him. Eventually, three GOP senators—Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Lisa Murkowski—voted against Hegseth. All three, as well as Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis, the two Republican senators perceived as the key swing votes for Hegseth, did not respond to requests for comment today about the latest Signal group chat.
Some of MAGA world’s biggest stars, including Donald Trump Jr., have rallied to Hegseth’s defense. And the Pentagon chief himself blamed his just-fired aides for the negative stories, declaring, “Big surprise that a few leakers get fired, and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out.”
“We’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters,” Hegseth told reporters as he stood near his children and the pastel eggs that dotted the White House lawn. “Slash and burn doesn’t work with me.”
But others in Trump’s orbit feel that the latest Signal story has put Hegseth on shaky ground. The Times reported that Hegseth had shared details about the Houthi attack plans with the chat that included his two family members and his lawyer. In this case, Hegseth himself launched the chat, a White House official confirmed to me today. Its members included Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer who is not a Defense Department employee but has often traveled with Hegseth overseas and drawn criticism for at times accompanying her husband to meetings with foreign leaders. Others in the chat include the secretary of defense’s brother Phil and his personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, a naval reservist. Both have Pentagon jobs but serve in positions that would not require knowledge of the Houthi-strike details. Even before this week, the frequent presence of Hegseth’s family had raised eyebrows among some in the Pentagon and the White House. (A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.)
Also in the chat were a number of Hegseth’s closest aides—some of whom were among those abruptly ousted last week. Two of them, Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor, and Darin Selnick, a deputy chief of staff, were accused, as part of an internal probe, of leaking unauthorized information and were fired and escorted from the Pentagon. Another top aide, Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff, is being reassigned elsewhere in the Pentagon. And yesterday, a fourth recently departed Defense Department official, John Ullyot, wrote in an opinion essay for Politico that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and suggested that Trump should remove the secretary. “The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon—and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration,” Ullyot wrote.
The purge was as mysterious as it was sudden. In a joint statement on social media, the ousted DOD officials declared their confusion as to why they had been fired and who had fired them. Hegseth, who has little managerial experience, had already been viewed as somewhat isolated in the Pentagon and was now suddenly without some of his senior advisers.
[Read: Pete Hegseth declines to answer]
The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced earlier this month that he would review Hegseth’s Houthi-strike disclosures in the original Signal chat, which included top Trump aides. It was unclear today if that probe will broaden to include the second Signal conversation. But one of the White House officials I spoke with speculated that other departures could be forthcoming, whether related to the leak probe or to perceived disloyalty to Trump. Hegseth and Trump previously oversaw the firings of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top military generals.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declared “fake news” when asked on Fox News today if Hegseth’s job is in jeopardy, and she downplayed any notion that the Department of Defense is in disarray. “This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change you are trying to implement,” she said.
One official familiar with the newly discovered chat told me that Hegseth’s aides had previously warned him against using Signal, including on his personal phone, to discuss operational details. Signal, although encrypted, is not considered as secure as government channels typically used for discussing highly sensitive war planning and combat operations. A number of former Pentagon officials have in recent weeks expressed public concern about Hegseth’s use of Signal and his leadership.
“You’re seeing the secretary of defense basically fire his entire senior team around him, so it’s unclear who’s sort of keeping the ships running at the staff level, and that is really concerning,” Sabrina Singh, a deputy Pentagon press secretary in the Biden administration, told me. “There’s a chaos that is continuing to permeate through the Pentagon.”