Pete Hegseth stopped Ukraine weapons supply and kept Trump in dark

25 comments

1. Article contents:

   *Alistair Dawber, Washington, May 6 2025, The Times*

   President Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the cancellation of military aid flights to Ukraine without the knowledge of the White House.

   Leading figures close to Trump and senior officials at the national security council, Pentagon and state department were dumbfounded when they received frantic calls from Kyiv saying that the shipment of artillery shells and other munitions had failed to arrive.

   It emerged on Tuesday that Hegseth had issued the order to ground the flights after a meeting in the White House on January 30. Sources said that while stopping or curtailing weapons shipments to Ukraine was discussed at the meeting, Trump did not order that the flights be grounded.

   The president was unaware of Hegseth’s intervention, as were other top national security officials at the meeting, according to sources.

   The incident will prompt further concern about Hegseth’s suitability for the job, for which he was confirmed on January 24. The former National Guard infantry officer and Fox News host is under investigation over his use of the Signal app to discuss sensitive government information.

   There were several officials who believed it should have been Hegseth, rather than the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who was removed from their post last week over the Signal scandal.

   Waltz mistakenly invited a journalist to a group on the messaging app. The group, which included several national security officials and senior White House staff, was told by Hegseth in March about imminent plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen.

   The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Hegseth, 44, had been part of at least 12 chat groups on the app, which the US government does not consider to be secure, including one that included his wife and lawyer. It said that he used Signal to communicate with foreign allies about military operations and to discuss his media appearances and travel plans.

   Hegseth was insistent during his congressional hearings that he would return the Pentagon’s focus to the lethality of its war-fighting capabilities and promotion by merit. He denied allegations of sexual misconduct, despite an email emerging from his mother saying he was a serial abuser of women, and of drunkenness.

   In office, he has removed a number of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and has sought to expel trans military personnel, an issue that is jamming up the courts. Earlier this week, the defence department announced plans to remove 20 per cent of the US military’s highest-ranking officers.

   Those who have worked for the defence secretary say he is running a department that lacks direction. “Choosing someone who has never managed an organisation more complex than an infantry platoon is certainly a novel choice,” one Pentagon source said. “But does any of that qualify him to manage the world’s largest, most complex bureaucracy? Absolutely not.”

   Colin Carroll, who was sacked in April as chief of staff to the deputy defence secretary, Stephen Feinberg, amid a leak investigation, said that highest-ranking officials were spending 50 per cent of their time worrying about leaks to the media. “[Hegseth] was very focused on the leaks and I think it kind of consumed the team a little bit,” he told The Megyn Kelly Show podcast. “If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50 per cent of it is probably a leak investigation.”

   Carroll described Hegseth as being obsessive about his public image and said that videos posted online of his early-morning workouts with soldiers were an attempt to combat reports of his fondness for alcohol.

   When asked about Hegseth’s decision to cancel the flights, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said: “Negotiating an end to the Russia-Ukraine war has been a complex and fluid situation. We are not going to detail every conversation among top administration officials throughout the process. The bottom line is the war is much closer to an end today than it was when President Trump took office.”

   The Pentagon referred a request for comment to the White House.

2. So Hegseth is the next UN-Embassador?

3. ‘member when MAGA/GOP incessantly claimed that Biden wasn’t actually running things, it was the people around him?

4. Unfortunately he is an emotionally stunted half wit. Patriotic through and through but a half wit!

5. If this is accurate then he needs to be fired.

6. Folks folks the truth be known. It’s really not that hard to keep Trumpy in the dark. He lives in a dark word salad fantasy land. I am a Republican that did not vote for him or this madness and I am profoundly embarrassed for our country.

7. Hegseth looks exactly like the little cocksucker that he is.

8. This has shades of dementia reagan and the iran contra affair all over it. 

   Perhaps instead of having just a minimal age requirement for the U.S. presidency,  there should be a maximum as well.  

   Either way, the White House bears the responsibility whatever the latest bs excuse.

9. Wouldn’t expect anything different from MAGA. Thyr been hating on Ukraine the whole war.

10. kept in the dark or covered for him?

11. this dude wouldn’t last one second in cubicle-world

12. Totally in the dark. Not just another surprise delay tossed into the pipeline intentionally.

13. It’s worth mentioning that many of the people around moustache man in the early years were misfits, egomaniacs and accomplished liars.

    Comparing it to team orange the only difference I see is that there were far fewer fucking feckless incompetents in the Nazi party of 1933.

14. Blame the king’s advisors. That always works

15. and yet he is still not fired

16. Hegseth disobeyed Trump… Hegseth is gonna get cut. Trump has NO BALLS otherwise, and is gonna look like a chump.

17. I don’t think this is completely true. Trump seems like the bigger liar to me. We shall see if this is more of an excuse since Trump is going to fire Hegseth anyway. Hegseth probably is okay with getting fired since he doesn’t like to work that hard and is wholly unsuited for the job.

18. I don’t believe this for a second. It was Trump’s decision, but I bet he plans to fire Hegseth and now they’re blaming as many bad decisions on him as possible before the axe falls.

19. America has become so embarrassing.

20. I call BS, their just following orders.

21. I wouldn’t say kept Trump in the dark as if they tried to fool him. There was a meeting before on canceling aid, and Pete got ahead of himself. The guy is a fool like his boss. If Trump had been watching Ukraines aid, you know his regular security briefings or something, he would have caught Pete, but Trump hates those kind of things.

22. I love my country but I am embarrassed how things have gotten out of control.

23. You can see the traitors in broad daylight. 

24. He is taking the fall for frump. These people always lie. Always.

25. Somebody needs to get Signal out on trumps phone.

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