President Donald Trump appeared to brutally undercut Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the Pentagon paused a weapons shipment to Ukraine.
Hegseth may serve at the pleasure of the president and be one of his loudest promoters, but Trump’s comments about Ukraine on Monday night came across as another humiliation for the former Fox News personality, the latest in a series since he took office.
Trump was asked about whether the U.S. would send more weapons to Ukraine while he was hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for dinner at the White House.
“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to send more weapons, defensive weapons primarily.”
Hegseth was seated to Trump’s left and rapidly nodded along, glancing over at the president as he spoke.
Social media seized on the Pentagon’s chief’s caught on camera reaction as Trump’s response came after the Pentagon had put a freeze on weapons to the embattled European nation.
The pause, first reported by Politico last week, was primarily driven by Defense Department policy chief Elbridge Colby. It even sparked outrage from some GOP Trump allies who accused Pentagon officials of moving forward without informing top brass, a claim the administration denied.
Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a call Friday that he wasn’t responsible for the halted shipments, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But when asked about the decision to halt weapons to Kyiv and whether it was done without the president’s approval, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Monday that was not true.
“This was a standard review by the Pentagon of all weapons and all aid and all support that the United States is providing all countries and all regions around the world, not just Ukraine,” Leavitt said. “When the secretary of defense took office, he directed the Pentagon to conduct this review to ensure that everything that’s going out the door aligns with America’s interests.”
The Pentagon confirmed to the Daily Beast that the U.S. would move on sending additional weapons, but it did not address questions about the timeline of the pause, or when the defense secretary was informed of the president’s decision.
“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops,” said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell in a statement. “Our framework for POTUS to evaluate military shipments across the globe remains in effect and is integral to our America First defense priorities.”
The president’s pronouncement was not the first time Trump publicly undercut messaging from the Pentagon chief and his team.
Most recently, the president contradicted his top officials over Iranian regime change.
“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Hegseth confidently declared at a press briefing.
Similar comments were echoed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance before the president undercut the narrative with a social media post raising the possibility of change if the current regime is “unstable.”
Then there was Trump’s disappointment in the multimillion-dollar military birthday parade. Biographer Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast that the president “reamed out” Hegseth for how it played out.
That’s on top of the series of scathing reports since the start of the administration that the president at times has been looking to replace the Pentagon chief, but the defense secretary has managed to hold on so far as he fiercely praises Trump publicly at nearly every turn.
However, the president is not the only one who has publicly undermined Hegseth.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine immediately contradicted the Pentagon chief last month when he said it would take time to assess the damage of the U.S. strikes on Iran, just moments after the defense secretary claimed they had caused total obliteration.
The post Trump Humiliates Hegseth Again With Ukraine Weapons Slap Down appeared first on The Daily Beast.
