President Donald Trump is confident that Pete Hegseth is going to “get it together” any day now — which, to be frank, is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the scandal-plagued former Fox News host he put in charge of the entire United States military.
In an interview with The Atlantic published Monday, Trump said Hegseth has “had a hard time” and that he thinks he’s “gonna get it together.”
“I think he’s a smart guy. He is a talented guy. He’s got a lot of energy. He’s been beat up by this, very much so. But I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him,” Trump added.
The assurance came in response to a question about how Hegseth has recently fired top advisers, installed a makeup studio in the Pentagon, and discussed sensitive attack plans in at least two unsecured Signal chats. “Have you had a talk with him about getting things together?” Ashley Parker asked the president, to which he didn’t refute that Hegseth needed to do so. “Yeah, I have,” Trump said.
Allegations of heavy drinking and sexual assault overshadowed much of Hegseth’s contentious confirmation process, and less than three months into his time atop the Defense Department he has already been the face of perhaps the most embarrassing scandal of Trump’s second term. The Atlantic reported last month that Hegseth sent sensitive attack plans against Houthi rebels in Yemen to a Signal chat that accidentally included the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffry Goldberg. It was later reported that he discussed the plans in another unsecured chat with his wife and attorney.
Trump framed the whole ordeal as a valuable lesson.
“I think we learned: Maybe don’t use Signal, OK? If you want to know the truth. I would frankly tell these people not to use Signal, although it’s been used by a lot of people. But, whatever it is, whoever has it, whoever owns it, I wouldn’t want to use it,” the president said.
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The Signal snafus are only one element of a chaotic first few months leading the Pentagon, and despite rumblings that Trump could be looking to replace Hegseth, the president and the White House have backed him publicly.
“He’s safe,” Trump told The Atlantic, adding that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz (who accidentally added Goldberg to the Signal chat) is also “fine.”