Pete Hegseth’s job may be safe for now, but the clock is ticking on his already tenuous tenure as Pentagon chief, the Daily Beast’s Washington bureau chief predicted Wednesday.
David Gardner issued a fearless forecast for Hegseth’s future in an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast following uproar over the Pentagon’s new policy heavily restricting press freedom at the Defense Department.
“We were told early on that Trump did not want a repeat of his first administration, where it was kind of chaos. He was firing people, hiring people, it was a lot of unrest within the administration,” he told host Joanna Coles.
“We were told he was going to give his Cabinet—most of his leading Cabinet members—a year, so there wasn’t this kind of constant departure thing. So my guess is, watch out for January and Pete Hegseth, because I don’t think he’s going to last much longer than that first year.”
The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment on Wednesday.
Daily Beast political reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice said the year-long trial period may actually be part of a broader strategy.
“If you say your cabinet members are not going to be long-term choices from the get-go, then you put them in this competition from the get-go to basically fight it out and prove who’s the most loyal to the president,” she said. “So it’s really a fight for the president’s attention and support more than it is a fight for the job and the department.”
This week, longtime defense reporters from various media outlets across the political spectrum had their badges confiscated after they roundly rejected Hegseth’s unprecedented new restrictions on journalists, which the Pentagon Press Association has described as “vague new policies that, on their face, appear to violate the First Amendment.”
The accredited reporters at the Pentagon- including yours truly. I guess they’ll take this down now. pic.twitter.com/37qyIB2be3
— Mike Glenn (@MikeRGlenn) October 14, 2025
Under Hegseth’s new rules, reporters get stripped of their press credentials if they refuse to sign compliance forms pledging to protect unauthorized material, even if the information is unclassified.
Over a dozen outlets have declined to sign off on the new policy, from legacy media like The New York Times and The Washington Post, to conservative networks like Newsmax and Fox News.
The press policy debacle followed a catastrophic first few months for Hegseth, who stirred controversy when he accidentally leaked information about a military strike to a journalist, summoned top military brass from all over the world for a bizarre pep talk in Quantico, and axed several high-ranking defense officials.
“So he’s bottom of the list in terms of efficiency and top of the list in terms of suck ups,” Gardner said.
Gardner said Hegseth has been “taking very much a back step to the whole procedure” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio takes on a more central role.
“I don’t think he’s trusting him,” he said of Trump and Hegseth. “I seem to remember the last meeting in the Middle East, he was put on a separate plane from the others, Hegseth. Again, sending a message perhaps.”
Trump’s first administration was beset by a revolving door of officials. Most notably, Anthony Scaramucci served only 11 days as White House communications director.
The president has so far defied the trend in his second term, but White House insiders have already cast their bets on which Cabinet members could soon face the boot.
Presidential advisers polled by WIRED magazine said Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were the least liked Cabinet members in Trump’s White House.
“Worst, Bondi,” one source who was asked to rank Cabinet secretaries told the outlet. “2/ Bondi. 3/ Bondi. 4/ Bondi. 5/ HegsethRFKTulsiNoem.”
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