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The Apprentice at War: Hegseth’s Pentagon Circus [1]
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Date: 2025-04-28
In considering Trump’s cabinet, it is difficult to rank individuals from worst to least bad. Obviously, the bias here is that they are all really bad. As Trump limps across the 100-day goal line, it’s appropriate to examine their records — starting with Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose actions are, at best, sophomoric.
Hegseth has a penchant for ignoring security protocols, using the Signal app for sensitive information, and now running an unprotected internet line into his SCIF office, making it possible for foreign adversaries to obtain classified data directly as he uses his computer. He is also playing “The Apprentice,” gleefully repeating “You’re fired!” within the Pentagon. Chaos, not competence, defines his tenure as he battles on multiple fronts — DEI, “woke” culture, women, transgender service personnel, the Confederacy’s Lost Cause, the Southern border, and more — and loses across the board.
His insecurity is well-placed. Rumors suggest Trump is quietly seeking a replacement despite outwardly supporting him — a classic Trump move: full-throated praise until the inevitable “You’re fired.”
The debacle dubbed “Signal-gate” raises the obvious question: Why? Hegseth’s apparent need to impress and seek affirmation points to someone wildly in over his head. In “Signal-gate One,” he tried to impress colleagues by illegally sharing operational military plans — in real time — over an unsecured app. Those revelations, exposed by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, burned him badly. Yet undeterred, “Signal-gate Two” followed: this time, sharing strike details with his wife (a former Fox News producer), his brother (whom he hired at the Pentagon), and his personal lawyer. Clearly, Hegseth learns nothing from his failures.
In keeping with this reckless pattern, Hegseth took his wife to two sensitive meetings with foreign military counterparts. She had also accompanied him to all his Senate confirmation meetings. Why does he need her to prop him up? His behavior is driven far more by weakness than strength — a charitable assessment that assumes he has any real strengths.
Hegseth’s reign of incompetence has left a trail of firings and resignations: senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, Colin Carroll (chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary), and Joe Kasper (his chief of staff). All handpicked, all gone. Replacements have even less experience. DEI hires?
Beyond staff turmoil, Hegseth also fired Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti (Chief of Naval Operations), Air Force Gen. James Slife (Vice Chief of the Air Force), Army JAG Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, and Air Force JAG Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer — all under the dubious banner of fighting “wokeness.” Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, once a staunch Hegseth ally, resigned and later wrote an April 20, 2025, Politico op-ed decrying the complete chaos under Hegseth’s leadership.
Following an Executive Order, Hegseth proudly declared, “DEI is dead at the Defense Department.” True to his word, he oversaw the removal of Pentagon web pages honoring Jackie Robinson, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Ira Hayes (one of the Iwo Jima flag-raisers), and Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, the highest-ranking Medal of Honor recipient who was Black.
These web pages were eventually restored — but not before revealing how casually Hegseth was willing to erase history. The irony was sharp: Jackie Robinson was himself a victim of segregation during his Army service, an early figure in civil rights for breaking the color line in Major League Baseball — hardly someone deserving of being scrubbed from memory in an anti-DEI purge.
Hegseth’s crusade against “woke” even led to the removal of a photo of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. (The plane was named by Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets — no connection whatsoever to LGBTQ issues.) This absurd deletion was part of a wider purge of 26,000 Pentagon images and posts — a grotesque whitewashing of military history.
Meanwhile, under Hegseth, the Pentagon has descended into screaming matches, distrust, bureaucratic paralysis, and logjams stalling Trump’s initiatives like an “Iron Dome for America” missile defense shield. Staff cuts of up to 200,000 Pentagon jobs — once unthinkable — are now being openly discussed. (Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/politics/hegseth-chaos-pentagon.html)
On March 1, 2025, Hegseth announced that 3,000 more troops would be deployed to the Southern Border, joining 4,200 already there under federal orders and 5,000 National Guard troops under governors’ control. The new total of 12,200 soldiers actually exceeds the 7,181 undocumented immigrants apprehended at the border in March 2025. (Source:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/03/01/pentagon-sending-about-3000-more-active-duty-troops-us-mexico-border.html)
As part of his war against “woke,” Hegseth even reversed the renaming of two Army bases. Fort Bragg (formerly renamed Fort Liberty) in North Carolina reverted to its Confederate roots, Confederate General Braxton Bragg — though nominally rededicated to Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II paratrooper. Fort Benning in Georgia (renamed Fort Moore) will now honor Cpl. Fred G. Benning, a World War I veteran, instead of Confederate General Henry L. Benning. Finding soldiers with the same surnames to justify restoring Confederate names is about as thin a fig leaf as it gets. Wink, wink.
Hegseth has vowed to continue this farce, restoring other Confederate base names as soon as he can find matching last names among non-Confederate veterans.
Pete Hegseth’s incompetence is no longer a matter of opinion; it is a documented fact — visible in the Pentagon’s chaos, America’s diminished readiness, and the erosion of core military values. His tenure reflects poorly not only on Donald Trump, who appointed him but on every Republican senator who voted to confirm him. Hegseth is not merely the worst of the worst — he is a symbol of the reckless, juvenile governance that has come to define the Trump administration’s second term. Trump thinks Hegseth will get it together. Of course, neither Hegseth nor Trump will get it together.
Day 99: days left to January 20, 2029: 1,362 days
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