Rank incompetence

Transcript:I’m Thomas Mills for PoliticsNC. Today is Tuesday, Apr 25, 2025 and the knives are out at the Department of Defense.Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth continues the steady stream of bad press that goes with rank incompetence.This week, he fired or replaced his entire upper management, including his chief of staff.Hegseth and his cronies said they were leaking, but they were some of his closest aides.Before long, Signalgate 2.0 dropped.It turns out, Hegseth didn’t just give confidential information to an unsecure chat group of Cabinet Secretaries.He gave a blow-by-blow of a strike on Yemen to another chat group with friends and family.By the end of the weekend, Hegseth’s former spokesman at the Defense Department wrote a scathing article in Politico calling on Trump to fire the Secretary.You can’t make this stuff up.Trump, for his part, is standing by his man.He says Hegseth is doing a great job and the White House shot down rumors that he’s about to get canned.But he will eventually, because can’t help himself.He reminds me of Mark Robinson.Like Robinson, Hegseth’s bad habits are ingrained.They’re part of who he is.He’s been lying and making bad decisions his whole life.He's a braggart who needs to let everybody know how important he is.Discipline won’t cure what ails him.Nope, like Robinson, the hits will keep on coming.Trump keeps him because he’s totally in the bag.He’ll do whatever he’s told, no matter how egregious.When you’re trying to install an authoritarian regime, a guy like Hegseth is good to have around.He’s a guy who would order troops to fire on Americans or invade a sovereign nation unprovoked.He doesn’t need to be too savvy. He just needs to follow orders.The question is whether he can make it long enough to be useful.At some point, Hegseth’s going to do something that reflects badly on Trump–more than rank incompetence does.When that happens, Trump will fire him.The question is whether it happens before or after he’s been useful.I’m Thomas Mills, signing off for PoliticsNC. Get full access to PoliticsNC at www.politicsnc.com/subscribe