This is one of those stories that “moves faster than a hummingbird’s wings” as Dan Rather used to put it. Thank heavens for the internet, which allows us to keep up on each breaking detail. The latest developments in SignalGate — both I and II — display a Department Of Defense in crack up mode as more key people head for the exits, either under their own speed or because they’ve been fired. It’s also been predicted that SECDEF himself is not long for his current role.
The Pentagon is in “total chaos” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is unlikely to remain in his role, according to its former top spokesperson, who painted a scene of dysfunction, backstabbing and continuous missteps at the highest levels of the department.
“The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” John Ullyot wrote Sunday in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece. “The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”
Ullyot, who resigned from the Pentagon last week, described a department in collapse. He accused Hegseth’s team of “falsehoods” about why three top officials were fired last week, saying they hadn’t leaked sensitive information to the media. He chastised Pentagon officials for how they handled revelations that Hegseth shared sensitive military information in a Signal chat, and he pointed to other leaks that caused embarrassment to the administration.
One key lesson that Trump world doesn’t seem able to learn is that the cover up is frequently so much worse than the crime. Another lesson is that you’re frequently better off cutting your losses early on in the game. Hegseth should have resigned. Now it looks like he’ll either be forced into that or Trump will actually fire him.
The Pentagon on Friday fired top staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff will also leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official.
POLITICO was the first to report the firings and Kasper’s move, which one defense official ascribed to personality clashes between the chief of staff and the other men.
“Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge” that has left him without senior advisers, Ullyot wrote. “More firings may be coming, according to rumors in the building.”
The three fired staff backed up some of Ullyot’s claims in a Saturday post on X, saying they didn’t know why they were terminated. The trio wrote that they “have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”[…]
His [Ullyot’s] comments will likely make more trouble for Hegseth, who remains under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general for his use of Signal to disclose sensitive information about airstrikes in Yemen. The New York Times reported Sunday that Hegseth allegedly set up a Signal chat with his wife, a former Fox News producer, and his lawyer, in which he disclosed potentially classified information on upcoming airstrikes against the Houthis.
“It’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer,” he wrote.
This is the speculation of somebody highly placed and in any normal kind of an administration, I would say this is something you could count on. But this is not a normal administration. Nothing about it is remotely normal. Both the White House and the Department Of Defense are playing possum on this subject for the moment.
We predicted here when Hegseth was confirmed by a tie-breaking vote by J.D. Vance that if anybody in Trump 2.0 would go first, it would be Hegseth. You don’t need to be Nostradamus to figure this one out. Hegseth is woefully underqualified and massively controversial. Both of these shortcomings exploded when SignalGate I occurred and then swiftly thereafter, Chapter II of SignalGate.
So will Trump continue to sweep this under the rug? Trump most likely told Hegseth to “fix it” and Hegseth’s idea of fixing things is to fire key people or force them out. However, there’s only so many key people you can force out of any infrasture before the thing itself begins to collapse like a jenga tower.
if you’re not doing anything bad then there’s nothing to leak. maybe they’ll hire Russian operatives to fill these positions.
John Ullyot: “The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the President — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”
Well that’s a very nice thing to say, John, but let’s be honest : He really doesn’t deserve better. On the contrary, he’s getting exactly what he deserves. He carefully hand-picked this waste of protoplasm and other masterpieces of treachery and incompetence, for his cabinet and staff. Better people don’t want to be in this government, and he doesn’t want better people anyway. So I’d call it karma.
So Kasper, Hegseth’s COS, leaves that position but will move to another desk within the Defense Dept. Terrific. Not fired, then, just re-assigned. Sort of like all those child abusers within certain churches who get sent to faraway parishes to carry on their fun instead of being punished in any meaningful way (eg jail). This entire “administration” is a very unfunny joke.