President Donald Trump’s advisor Elon Musk and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are locked in a battle of wills over military staffing and spending, plunging the already beleaguered Pentagon even deeper into chaos.
As head of the cost-cutting initiative DOGE, the world’s richest man is determined to find tens of billions of dollars in Defense Department savings and lay off hundreds of thousands of defense employees.
Hegseth has publicly supported DOGE’s efforts, but behind the scenes he has opposed Musk’s attempts to cut civilians working in military hospitals, shipyards, munitions factories and schools, The New York Times reported.
DOGE wants to slash up to 200,000 civilian employees out of 750,000, which Hegseth says would cripple critical department functions.
Their clash pits a guy who looks like a sentient Army Ken doll against the living embodiment of the “geeks shall inherit the Earth” theory.
Hegseth is hyper focused on restoring what he calls “warrior ethos” to the Defense Department. By the Times count, he has posted 16 photos and videos over the past month of himself working out with combat troops.
Musk famously can’t bring himself to exercise and says his life’s work is to colonize Mars in order to ensure humanity’s long-term survival.
Both, however, have an avowed hatred of “wokeness.”
They also have famously messy personal lives. Hegseth has been married three times and has admitted to cheating on all three wives, including his current one. Musk has fathered at least 14 children with four women, and his estranged daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson has accused him of being a “serial adulterer.”
Defense officials told the Times the two men met at the White House this month to try to work out their differences, though it’s not clear how successful the effort was.
Trump has vowed to increase military spending from $850 billion annually to $1 trillion, and yet Musk is determined to find tens of billions of dollars in Defense Department savings, the Times reported.
Earlier this month, he replaced a senior official representing DOGE at the Pentagon because the official wasn’t willing to make deep enough cuts.
Hegseth is also facing other crises at the Pentagon not of Musk’s making.
The former Fox News host is facing calls for his resignation after sharing detailed information about upcoming military strikes in multiple unsecured group chats on the messaging app Signal.
He has clashed with career Pentagon officials and frustrated employees at the Defense Department as members of his inner circle—who have never run large, complex organizations—struggle to streamline even the most basic functions, like having Hegseth sign off on documents requested by the White House, the Times reported.
Sources told the paper that aides have gotten in screaming matches in his inner office. His chief of staff Joe Kasper has led meetings that devolved into long-winded stories about his evenings at strip clubs. And Hegseth’s deputies have combed Pentagon officials’ old social media posts searching for any signs of disloyalty toward Trump or MAGA.
Three civilian Pentagon officials who had served in combat—including two had been wounded in Afghanistan—were instructed to provide copies of their resumes in order to prove their “patriotism.”
Hegseth himself has reportedly taken a page from Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s book and threatened to administer polygraph tests to suspected leakers.
Trump, however, doesn’t seem concerned.
“[Hegseth] is doing a great job—ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” the president said of the Iran-backed rebel group in Yemen was the target of the strikes.
But even Republican lawmakers are calling for Hegseth to be fired this week after news broke that he had shared detailed attack information with his wife, brother and personal attorney.
“I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge,” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said on Monday.
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