Amid personnel turmoil at the Pentagon, multiple and intensifying controversies, and fresh calls for his resignation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke to U.S. troops at the Army War College, where he delivered an “expletive-laden address“ about how pleased he is with recent efforts.
“The media likes to call it chaos,” Hegseth said of his record. “We call it overdue. That means no more social engineering. No more climate change worship. No more electric tanks. No more gender confusion. No more pronouns. No more excuses. No more quotas. No more woke bull—- that undermines commanders and command climates.”
The beleaguered Pentagon chief concluded, “We are laser-focused on our mission of war-fighting.”
That’s not, strictly speaking, true. Under Hegseth’s leadership — I’m using the word loosely — the Department of Defense has been focused on a great many things that have literally nothing to do with fighting wars. Indeed, the list includes some cartoonishly absurd priorities such as scrubbing DOD websites of articles and images about Jackie Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers, while banning books from military libraries that might offend the Trump White House’s delicate sensibilities.
For all of Hegseth’s reported interest in “lethality” and championing a hypermasculine “warrior ethos,” in recent months, he and the Pentagon have invested a ridiculous amount of time in pursuing petty culture war goals that don’t advance the nation’s national security goals in any way.
It was against this backdrop that CBS News reported:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered modifications to a room next to the Pentagon press briefing room to retrofit it with a makeup studio that can be used to prepare for television appearances, multiple sources told CBS News. The price tag for the project was several thousand dollars, according to two of the sources, at a time when the administration is searching for cost-cutting measures.
While Hegseth described the report as a “totally fake story,” a Defense Department spokesperson made no effort to deny the accuracy of the report, instead describing the modification as a “routine” upgrade. A Pentagon spokesperson also said the new space will be available to others, not just the secretary. (The CBS report has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.)
The story stood out for me, not just because of the degree to which it defies Hegseth’s rhetoric about a “warrior ethos,” but also because of what we’re learning about his role on Donald Trump’s team. Indeed, the president chose a television personality to lead the Pentagon, so it stands to reason that he’d want a new makeup studio.
By all appearances, his job isn’t to serve an administrative role, overseeing one of the planet’s largest and most complex bureaucracies; his job is to effectively play the role of defense secretary on TV, saying words like “tough” and “strength” on Fox News as Trump nods along while watching.
Hegseth is less of a cabinet secretary and more of a camera-ready performer. He’s able to keep his job — at least for now — not through competent governance, but rather by responding to the CBS News report by publishing a tweet that read in part, “We should have installed tampon machines in every men’s bathroom at DoD instead — the leftist ‘news’ media would have loved that.” It’s the sort of juvenile online trolling that makes Hegseth look ridiculous to everyone except those ingrained in far-right politics. All the while, the secretary’s knowledgeable critics continue to share damaging new details with journalists, including new reporting in The Washington Post and The New York Times that Hegseth had Signal installed on his Pentagon computer, reportedly so that he could “send and receive instant messages in a space where personal cellphones are not permitted.” (The White House has downplayed the reports as a “nonstory.”) These allegations, which also have not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, come just days after revelations about Hegseth sending sensitive national security information about a foreign military operation to a 13-person Signal group chat — which included his wife, a former Fox News producer who does not have the necessary security clearance. As the week began, the political world was warned that damaging new allegations about Hegseth were on the way. Those warnings were correct.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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