Playing Secretary
June 16, 2025 at 09:29PMTo say that things are messy in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon would be the understatement of the year. As Kerry Howley’s reporting reveals, the place is beset by utter chaos—leaks that constitute a veritable tsunami, backstabbing among wildly unqualified staffers, and a leader more adept at posting photos of his workouts than managing one of the largest bureaucracies in the world:
Hegseth was different after Signalgate, according to six people in a position to know. He was more prone to anger and less likely to be clean-shaven in the morning. He seemed reluctant to make decisions; scared of doing the wrong thing, paralyzed as he awaited orders from the White House. The Pentagon had ceased, one source says, to be “creative”; it was a mechanism for implementing executive orders. Each new leak contributed to Hegseth’s sense that he was surrounded by moles in league with his enemies. It was “consuming his whole life,” says one source, “when he should have been focused on, you know, our national security.” Unclear on how to move forward, he retreated into spaces where he was comfortable. “Kicked off the day alongside the warriors,” posted Hegseth against an image of himself doing a burpee.
His circle grew smaller and, to people more accustomed to a traditional Defense Department, stranger. Why was his personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, always around? And his brother Phil? Hegseth began including his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, in meetings at the Department of Defense, a development that was reportedly “confusing” to foreign officials. Jenny directed the communications staff to “draw up a PR package” in a way that offended them; they did not work for her. In the secretary’s office are a half-dozen prints known as “jumbos.” Typically these would be pictures of tanks and troops in battle. In Hegseth’s office, instead, are seven giant pictures of Jenny Hegseth, many of them showing her in the same pink dress. “Without those two J ’s,” Hegseth once said to Megyn Kelly, “I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.” The other J was Jesus.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/06/16/playing-secretary/
via IFTTT
Watch