Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth covered a fair amount of ground in his latest interview with his former Fox News colleague, Will Cain, and the beleaguered Pentagon chief acknowledged that he’s received a lot of criticism since joining the White House Cabinet. In fact, he even suggested he should “get a medal” because journalists have reported on his many failures.
But of particular interest were his comments about the one criticism that apparently bothers him.
Hegseth: "There's a reason why our nation's most closely held secrets are contained in certain places with only access from certain people. Nobody takes that more seriously than me."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-05-19T20:15:25.054Z
“There’s a reason why our nation’s most closely held secrets are contained in certain places with only access from certain people,” the former Fox News personality said. “Nobody takes that more seriously than me.
“If there’s one thing I’ve sort of been offended by — I don’t get offended by much; I’m here to do my job for the president, for the country — is this idea that I don’t take classification or I don’t take clearances seriously. Nobody takes it more seriously than me.”
I can appreciate why Hegseth is eager to defend himself, especially on a network his boss watches, but all things considered, this was a subject he probably should’ve avoided.
By now, the basic elements of the “Signalgate” controversy are probably familiar: Top members of Donald Trump’s national security team participated in an unsecured group chat about sensitive operational details of a foreign military strike — and they accidentally included a journalist, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, in their online conversation.
The final paragraph of Goldberg’s piece on the fiasco read, “All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group — which, at the time, included me — ‘We are currently clean on OPSEC.’”
“OPSEC” refers to “operations security.” In other words, the defense secretary was certain that he and his colleagues — while chatting on a free platform that has never been approved for chats about national security or classified intelligence — had locked everything down and created a secure channel of communication.
Of course, we now know that Team Trump was most certainly not “clean on OPSEC,” Hegseth’s embarrassing boast notwithstanding.








