While calls are growing for Hegseth to step down, Trump will be keen to defend his hand-picked cabinet of loyalists because, unlike his first term, he believes they are on his side and share his unique vision.
He would also hate to give The Atlantic and its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, a political scalp. Goldberg wrote a piece in 2020 claiming Trump had said that Americans who died in war were “suckers” and “losers”. The President has always denied the story.
Trump’s instinct will be to resist the pressure and defend Hegseth unless he can see the writing on the wall.
For the moment, the President is hoping the fiasco over Hegseth sharing sensitive details about the military operation targeting Houthi militants in Yemen on an unclassified group chat on the Signal app will simply blow over.
“Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this,” he said at the White House. “I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you … It could be a defective platform. And we have to find that out.”
But the story may not blow over as soon as the President would like. The Atlantic’s decision to publish the text exchanges showing Hegseth discussing the timings of the attacks and the weapons involved – including F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles – is damning.
It points to inexperience and serves as a reminder that mistakes are likely to happen when people are appointed to jobs for which they are unprepared.
Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat who flew combat missions in the First Gulf War, posted on X: “The Signal incident is what happens when you have the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen,” he said. “We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign.”
Hegseth was still claiming on Wednesday in Honolulu that the information was not classified, but there is no doubt it was unwise to provide such sensitive details over the Signal group chat.
“There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information,” he said. “My job … is to provide updates in real time, general updates in real time, keep everybody informed. That’s what I did.”
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has also come under scrutiny for establishing the chat group in the first place and inadvertently inviting Goldberg to join – an embarrassing error.
It’s also something he has been unable to properly explain given his claim that “I don’t know this guy.”
The whole episode has created the unfortunate appearance of incompetence in the day-to-day running of the US government – that people in senior roles are making rookie errors.
Trump must guard against this view taking hold and ensure the lessons are learnt.
Any further careless mistakes made by senior figures in the administration will only reinforce perceptions that Trump failed to select the best people for the job.
At some point, the public will demand accountability if the blunders start stacking up.
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Everyone knows that Donald Trump isn’t afraid of firing someone, but the US President is digging in behind his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.