Look what happened is this crazy. We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. Make America great victory. How can you be against them? Welcome to a brand new episode of Sidebar from the Washington Post. I'm your host, Libby Casey, here with James Homan, columnist and editorial writer and J.M. Rieger, senior video journalist covering a lot of politics. All right, check out these words. Total chaos and the month from hell is how a former Pentagon spokesman describes the Department of Defense under Pete Hegseth. And the guy saying this is so Trumpy that he wrote a book last year called The Biden-Harris Betrayal, Weak and Woke on the World Stage. So the point of that is this is not a Biden holdover. This is not a quote unquote deep state guy.
This is someone who left the Defense Department and is now talking about his concerns about how Pete Hegseth's Defense Department is doing. And Hegseth is back in the group chat. Again, this is not an old news story. This is a new news story, a single group chat sharing details of U.S. military plans. This time, gentlemen, with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer. That story from the New York Times on Sunday. Now, Hegseth denies sharing anything classified, just like the last time this was a story, but there's a lot to dig into here. So we're going to talk about why people are leaving the Department of Defense, why some of them are getting fired, including Hegseth loyalists, and what this means for America's military readiness and some of the politics.
find it. What happened to Pete Hegseth over the last, let's say, 48 or so hours, James, because he's had a very bad few days, although you wouldn't know that to hear him defend himself. Basically, last week in a drip drip drip kind of thing, a bunch of his closest, longest serving aides got marched out of the Pentagon. And there are still a lot of unanswered questions about what was going on. We've heard that it was a leak investigation, although there are some dispute about that. It seems like Hegseth either
wanted or acceded to instructions from whether it was Doge or the White House to get rid of his top people and not back them up. And there is clearly a lot of bad blood, basically four, maybe five of his people. are now out. And he is lashing out at them. And basically, this is someone who had never really had meaningful management experience. Everything he's done over the last seven days has basically validated the concerns that were raised about him during the confirmation process, including by people like Mitch McConnell. And he is showing his basically being a neophyte as a manager. And he is really struggling to lead this organization. And now he's sort of lashing out. But he really is clearly in crisis mode. What is he doing? Go ahead, J.M. What is he doing to sort of defend himself and right the ship?
He's clearly playing to an audience of one here, right, which is Donald Trump, the president. This morning he goes on Fox News and is kind of vehemently defending himself. He's also at the Easter egg roll yesterday at the White House on the South Lawn there defending himself, calling this all fake news, chalking this up to disgruntled staffers. As you just pointed out, James, these are folks that Hegseth brought in. Some of these people have been with Hegseth for years. And the other thing is the reason that we're talking about this now is not only how remarkable this is, that his own people are criticizing him, saying that the Pentagon is in chaos, in turmoil right now. But on top of that, you have a series of building kind of episodes here at this point. So you have these staffers who have left who have criticized his leadership style. You have this new reporting from...
New York Times over the weekend that he was involved in a second signal chat on these Yemen war plans, military attack plans, whatever you want to call them. The White House has called that information sensitive. You have the dismissal of upwards of 10 or 12 senior military officials, generals and admirals who have been dismissed already. He hasn't even been on the job three months, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And you also had a month ago, Elon Musk receiving a top secret briefing on China on U.S. war plans worthy to go to war with China that Trump himself intervened on to say, whoa, what are we doing here? And afterwards, Hegseth walked back the classification level of that briefing. Let's listen to how Pete Hegseth.
is defending himself. He was at the Easter egg roll at the White House yesterday. If you're watching with us on YouTube, just watch the kids in the background of this clip, because this is a day that's really about the kids. But President Trump and Pete Hegseth were talking to the media quite a bit about very non-Easter-aggy things. Let's listen. See, this is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. It's not going to work with me, because we're changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters, and anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news.
Those kids are sort of like, what? Okay, let's just do some fact checking there. Anonymous sources, true or false? False. They're not anonymous. They're his people. There's own former staffers. They're out there giving interviews, putting out joint statements, writing op-eds for Politico under their own names. And he's not denying anything. He's not denying that he was in this signal chat that we know was called defense huddle.
and that he was sharing information about what time planes were going to be taking off and landing. We know that this was material that was sent over classified systems that then he was putting into these kind of hackable group chats. So that's just not true. And he really is pushing the narrative that the media is to blame. And that is the constituency of one element. He's appealing. He's trying to appeal.
to Trump. And so NPR reported, uh, yesterday afternoon that the white house is already looking at potential replacements, uh, for him as secretary of defense. And, uh, I'm not sure that Trump's in a firing mood. If I had to bet, I would bet Jay Powell is likely to get fired before Pete Hegseth does. It doesn't, you know, but we're back in this kind of Trump 1.0 chaos. You never know. Jay Powell is the chairman of the federal reserve. And as you guys talked about on Sybar last week, there's like,
We don't think legally he's even allowed to do that. It's questionable, but... But the market's tanked on Monday in part because I think there were growing fears over the weekend that they might try. And so, like, anyway, you never say never, but I think Hegseth is trying. Hegseth feels like he wants his ouster...
to be seen by Trump as caving to the media, caving to the mob, caving to the so-called deep state. And so Hegseth is trying to say the same reporters writing these stories about me are the people who wrote about the Russia, Russia, Russia, as he said during that gaggle. And so I think he's trying to tie himself to Trump and he's trying to sort of create. He's trying to position himself as like a martyr if he ends up falling. And this shows how Hegseth knows he's politically vulnerable right now. The fact that he's going out and talking about this as much as he is. If this were truly fake news, then Manor, he wouldn't be doing all these interviews. So he talks at the Easter egg roll. He goes on Fox and Friends, which is very much a homecoming jam. Yes. And where he's where he worked for years and is a friendly audience. He's gone on Fox a number of times. And again, he hasn't been on the job three months. And, you know, again, I think this point is not going to be a combative interview. They're going to let him say his piece. Right, right. Former colleagues. He is very, you know, he's had some very cozy interviews on Fox so far. And the other thing is.
Yes, the real overarching question right now is, is his job safe? Is Trump going to, you know, kind of allow this to continue? Does this sort of, you know, soften quiet down here? And the thing I'll say about Trump is obviously we don't know for sure, but he's not in a firing mood until he is in a firing mood. Oh, that's so true. It's we don't always know when it's going to turn. I want to talk more about that single chat in a moment. But since JM brought up this question and the thread that you were talking about, James, of like what might happen next.
What political capital did President Trump and Republicans expend to get Pete Hegseth confirmed? More than for any other nominee, maybe with the exception of RFK Jr. J.D. Vance was having dinner with Mike Johnson at the Naval Observatory, was in jeans and a button down and had to put on a suit to go break the tie. They hadn't expected it. They had to twist a lot of arms. Tom Tillis, the Republican from North Carolina, had indicated privately that he was going to vote against Hegseth and had indicated that several people he talked to ended up basically changing his vote so that Vance could break the tie. It was important to Trump and he is.
sort of, Hegseth has this connection with the president based on his time on television. And they really expended a lot, not just to get Hegseth, but to get his team in place. Elbridge Colby, who's functionally the number three at the Defense Department, goes by Bridge, Bridge Colby. He is of the sort of Hegseth, skeptical foreign intervention wing of the party. And he faced a lot of opposition from Republicans. And Trump and Vance and Don Jr. had to really make a lot of calls to get him across the finish line. So they finally got this team in place. And, you know, Trump's 100th day in office is next week. So it's, as we've kind of noted, he hasn't been there that long, but he's...
Honestly, he's made a bunch of mistakes. We're talking about Signal Gate. We're talking about the scandals. But even taking down the references to the Enola Gay from the Pentagon website because it was the word gay. That was the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Japan to end World War II. Taking down references to the Tuskegee Airmen, stuff like that. Just amateur hour. And I think that there have been a lot of headaches caused by the fact that these people really, they see themselves as disruptors, but they've just broken a lot of stuff. Who voted against him among Senate Republicans?
The big one was Mitch McConnell, and McConnell put out basically a two-page statement explaining that Hegs F lacked the temperament and the ideology to do the job, but also Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. Yeah. So, you know, Signalgate... 2.0, right? We're at this again. Why would his wife and brother be on a group chat about military plans? So Jenny, who is his third wife, she was his producer at Fox. And she is sort of like a genuine confidant. And she has been sitting in on meetings. She's been traveling with him. She's been attending sort of sensitive conversations. And his brother actually is on the payroll at DOD doing like social media or something kind of, you know, a little thin. But basically, he's there as his brother's sidekick. He was on a big Asia swing recently. And then Tim Parlatori, his personal lawyer, who defended him against all these accusations of sexual miscarriage.
conduct and such that he pushed back hard on. He also is inside the DoD. And so basically, this is like his kitchen cabinet of like informal advisors. And he's saying, and honestly, in his own telling, he's basically saying, these are my advisors, and we were sharing this information to figure out how to communicate publicly about it and talk about it. And so I think he sees his wife as sort of an equal partner and doesn't think it's wrong to include her. But you kind of always have to ask yourself, what if
What if it was Bob Gates doing this? Unimaginable. What if it was Lloyd Austin doing this? Lloyd Austin made some mistakes, went on AWOL basically when he was having medical problems, didn't tell anyone. But it's unimaginable that former secretaries of defense would have had their wives in these kinds of conversations. J.M. Hegseth says it wasn't classified information. We're back to that debate, which we saw the first time there was Signalgate when Jeffrey Goldberg, editor at The Atlantic, was put in the chat and he released the information from the group chat after he was really dismissed by Hegseth and his allies that it was anything sort of sensitive or important. And it was sensitive and important.
The White House has called it sensitive. And whether it was technically classified or not is sort of beyond the point here. It is against DOD Pentagon policy to use unsecured messaging apps. Signal is one of those to share sensitive information, to share times of plane takeoffs and landings for airstrikes in a foreign country. Right. These are the sort of things that we know were included in the text in, you know, the first signal group chat that came out. We don't know the contents at this point of the second signal chat, but.
The fact that this was even things were being discussed in this signal chat, according to the news reports that we have, is very concerning. And I think to James's point. When it comes to the big questions, who you ask matters. From breaking news to politics that impact your life to advice you can trust. Get answers you don't have to question with Ask the Post AI, trained exclusively on post journalism with clear sourcing. And if we don't know the answer, we'll tell you. Ask the Post AI. Find it on WashingtonPost.com or in the app. If this were a different.
Secretary of Defense. Well, you're reminding me of something, JM. In fact, words that Pete Hegseth himself used to criticize a former Secretary of State. Shall we roll the tape? Let's do it. Let's listen to how he talked about Secretary Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, if there was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now for what has been done. People have gone to jail for one one hundredth of what, even one one thousandth of what Hillary Clinton did. Having her made, print out, classify documents and give them to her physically, which means they were unsecured. It's all ridiculous. It's all over the top. It's all criminal. Doug up from the archives, Pete Hegseth back in the day talking about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. From 2016 during his time.
As an employee of Fox News, again, the tone about the email server, the kind of striking difference in tone there. And we've noted this both from Hague Seth, but also from other Trump officials, Trump himself, from other folks who were involved in the first revelations on the Signal Chat. And not surprising, but still remarkable to kind of hear them talk about that versus how they're talking about this now. Accountability for thee, but not me. J.M., why is Hegseth not being fired? I mean, just at a basic level, if we look at sort of the pattern that takes place, right, there's accusations of misconduct or mistakes being made. The president doesn't like it. I'm just saying generically when the focus is not on the issue that the president wants to be really promoting and talking about, in this case, like immigration, for example. And then it gets to such a fever pitch that eventually the person either has to resign or they're fired. But we're talking about him sort of clinging on and trying to make the fight to stay. How could that play out? I think there's a few things going on right now. One is that.
Ultimately, it's Trump's call. And right now, the reporting that we have is that Trump is still happy enough, at least with with Hague Seth likes the quote unquote look of Hague Seth. He talks about how he wants folks from central casting going on TV. And we know that Trump is a kind of avid consumer of cable news. He also likes the loyalty. He likes the loyalty. And on top of that.
There has not yet been that there is starting to be, but there's not yet that groundswell of Republicans on Capitol Hill calling for Hagseth to go. We had Representative Don Bacon, Republican from Nebraska, yesterday saying that Hagseth has to go. But you also had Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, Senator, over the weekend supporting Hagseth after some of these initial reports came out. You have both Roger Wicker and Jack Reed. top Republican and Democrat on the Armed Services Committee calling for an inspector general's investigation into Signal Gate 1.0. So it's kind of a mixed bag right now. And I think if that starts to shift a little bit on Capitol Hill, once Congress is back next week, you could start to see the ball move on this. I mean, the media, quote unquote, you know, I'm using air quotes here. The media looks at something and digs into it, representing the public, right? The public has concerns. The media is asking the questions that reflecting what the public is asking about as well. And Congress might start getting nervous or concerned. It's also taking away the focus from what they want to be looking at and doing. James, are we just in different times?
We are. I mean, the rules of political gravity still apply. I think that this is all ties in with a broader calculation that may be a miscalculation by Trump that he has unlimited political capital and that if he doesn't use his political capital, he'll lose it and that this is his window. So why not just like go? You know, guns blazing is not a term to use, but, you know, full throttle. Why not go full throttle at the bureaucracy and, you know, all of the everything and just kind of see what you can do before you lose that capital. And so I think one of the things that's happening is that Hegseth is running into the limits of that. And and I think Trump seems.
unwilling to acknowledge that he's also running into the limits on things like immigration, where you have the Supreme Court in a 1.30 a.m. on Good Friday, the night of Good Friday, ruling stopping him from sending all these people out of the country. And so I think Trump calculates that he can, you know, this is a moment of opportunity, but I think the window is showing some signs of in some ways in some places starting to close and others, he can still be full speed ahead. We've talked about some of the issues surrounding Secretary Hegseth himself, but what we're hearing reports about are alarming, quote unquote chaos. That's what people who left the Department of Defense have described it as having and screaming matches inside. James, what is going on? There is chaos. We know that to be sure. And there's some great fresh reporting, including this guy, John Elliott, who was the top Pentagon spokesperson. Ironically, he is the one who wrote the memo kicking Politico out of the Pentagon.
press office spaces, and now he has written an op-ed that posted on Sunday for Politico, which also broke the news of his departure. It is so Washington, it really is. Him on the record talking about this month from hell inside the agency, and our former colleague Greg Jaffe, who's now recently gone to the New York Times, has a story that came out today, and it has just some wild details in it that I think... based on my understanding of what's going on, really only scratched the surface of how chaotic it is. But he writes about screaming matches in the inner office among aides, a growing distrust of the thousands of military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon, bureaucratic log jams, and frankly, a lot of petty infighting. That's not really about policy. It's not really about undoing DEI or whatever. It's just about people who are way out of their depths. And one of the details in this time story is about a meeting last month with Joe Casper, who was Hegseth's close friend, handpicked chief of staff, reportedly on his way out. He is, according to this New York Times story, meeting with this group that works with veterans and just...
starts talking into recounting an evening at a strip club with a representative of this group and, you know, going on and on, just body kind of amateur juvenile sort of stuff. And, you know, it matters. This is the, Hex has a big watchword is like lethality. He wants the Pentagon, you know, to restore lethality. And this is all.
This isn't a distraction. I mean, this kind of thing does ultimately corrode readiness if you have an ineffective organization where you have, you know, it's the biggest organization by money, by staff in the world. The guy who wrote the Politico piece, John Elliott, was among the first hires under Hegseth in the communications realm. And this is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He's the one I mentioned at the top of the show, wrote this book, We Can Woke, about the Biden-Harris betrayal. He is a Trump loyalist. He talks about it in the op-ed in Politico. I mean, he does throw some compliments toward Pete Hegseth, and he's very complimentary towards Donald Trump. What he's basically saying, though, is this is unsustainable and that Trump needs better, right? It's not like he's turned his back against Donald Trump.
He's raising the alarm because key personnel, who he sees as essential to things functioning at the Defense Department, have been purged and kicked out. Tell us more about that, JM. You have folks who have either been in Trump world or who have been with Higgseth for years who are saying that this is not tenable, this cannot go on, that there's chaos, month from hell, whatever terminology you want to use. And it's all consistent, by the way. There's now four folks.
that have gone on the record, senior aides handpicked. These are political appointees too, I think is an important thing to point out because Hegseth and some at the White House are sort of making allusions. Hegseth sort of implied it this morning on Fox News, although he didn't say the words, that these are deep state or these are career officials who are against the Trump agenda. So that therefore we have to get them out of here. The reality is, is that these folks are arguably as close to kind of what Trump wants or what he has said he has wanted as any staffer who's in there. And the fact that these folks are being pushed out and then turning and saying, this is a problem with Pete Hegseth is.
probably the most notable thing that's come out of the Pentagon. And really the reason that this has come to a head, even more so, I would say in some ways than. kind of the second signal chat. Totally. Let's talk about Dan Caldwell. He is also a Marine Corps veteran. He worked for many years alongside Pete Hegseth at Concerned Veterans for America. He was the director at one point and had a senior advisory role. These are people who, he worked hard to get Hegseth his job at the Department of Defense. These are people who have been like Hegseth's career ride or dies. James, what happened to Dan Caldwell? He was marched out of the building last week and he is someone who, there was this sort of general leak investigation that started after there was reporting about Elon Musk going to the Pentagon for a top secret briefing on the China war plan.
And that sort of set off this, we're gonna have a leak investigation. And purportedly, what the Hegseth world, I don't know what to call them, but the kind of claim is that this leak probe ended up finding other leaks and that potentially this guy was caught up in that. And there was another story that really angered some people in Trump world about how Israel was going to bomb Iran and basically the Americans. stopped Israel from doing that. And there was a feeling that it was sort of pushed by these people who are inside the administration who are the opposite of interventionists. So there was, there's some like stuff in the ether. Now all these guys deny vigorously leaking, but these are Hegseth's people. And these were people who were trying to do Hegseth's bidding. I mean, you think about it and all these guys are saying, well, we need to be replaced by competent people, but what sort of competent person would take one of these jobs right now? These are people that have given a decade of their lives to this guy and he has just thrown them under the bus. He's now attacking them on Fox, attacking them at the white house.
why would anyone go and sign up to do that? So you sort of assume that the people who are going to replace these guys are going to be even less qualified. Dan Caldwell went on Tucker Carlson's show, JM. Tell us about that and then we'll listen to a clip. He goes on Tucker Carlson and he basically they spend an hour and a half talking about a variety of things. But they also they spend a significant chunk of time talking about Pete Hegseth and the alleged reason why Caldwell was escorted out of the building. And Caldwell vehemently denies that he was leaking. And he also points out, I think this he says that the Pentagon is using this term unauthorized, quote, unauthorized disclosures. So they're not saying necessarily in Caldwell's words that there was classified information leaked, but that there was unauthorized disclosures to to the media. I do think it's ironic because we're talking about.
an unclassified system and signal that Higgs sets in, and yet these other folks are being ousted for unauthorized disclosures of information. Let's listen to Dan Caldwell on the Tucker Carlson show. The term they used is, and that you see the DOD using, is unauthorized release of information. I think there's a lot of rumors and people are exploiting this that we can talk about. If I actually did some of the things that anonymous people on the internet and in the Pentagon are saying I did, I'd be in handcuffs. And you're not. I'm not. I'd be like reality winner or Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden or one of those people.
You brought up Elon Musk earlier. There's been conflict between what Elon Musk and Doge want in terms of cuts at the Pentagon and what the Pentagon wants. Tell us more, James. So Doge has set a target of cutting 200,000 jobs from the Pentagon civilian workforce of 750,000 people. Hegseth has actually resisted that and said it's going to be really problematic and will actually be hurt if we lose that many people. Elon Musk has been angry at his representative from Doge at the Pentagon for not being aggressive enough. And so recently subbed out someone who's more sort of willing to.
cut things, because Pentagon is such a huge part of the budget. Musk feels like you're gonna have to roll back some of these grants and contracts and personnel. And so this has been part of the tension between Hegseth and the White House. And I think that it's part of what might be at play and some of these staffers were pushed out is that this is kind of a power struggle between musk and hegseth it's just a theory but elon musk is theoretically on his way out jam because as a special government employee where you have to disclose things his time is limited in the u.s government he only has a few more weeks correct so could that change the dynamic it's like a waiting game of like wait elon musk out it is although doge their white house is saying doge will continue to exist post elon musk now how that looks yeah is an open question but yes the special government employee 130 days that'd be the end of may i do think it's worth pointing out that This is the largest federal agency in the government. We know that Hague said that management issues, according to multiple witnesses accounts going into this. And they're also trying to make these cuts, doge at the Pentagon, as Trump simultaneously is pushing for the Pentagon's first ever trillion dollar budget. Square that circle. James, what does it mean to have chaos at the Defense Department? What's the danger in that? It matters. I mean, what the government does in defense, you can sort of on the front lines, you can obscure things for a little bit. But if there's rot at the top, it does end up sort of spreading out. It leads to more dysfunction. It leads to less strategic planning. It ends up taking a toll.
Thank you so much to both of you. We'll watch to see where this story continues to go. It is fascinating. So many more questions I have about this thing that we barely scratched the surface on, which is where is Doge going with everything if Elon Musk's time is limited, as you mentioned, J.M.? So we'll talk more about that in the upcoming episodes of Sidebar. J.M. Rieger, James Homan, I'm Libby Casey. Thank you so much to all of you for joining us today. A reminder that you can listen to us on your favorite podcast app, or you can find us on YouTube. Just look for The Washington Post. We'll talk to you soon.
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