Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks to be setting a new benchmark for pettiness after the humiliation of being passed over for talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
Instead, Hegseth has been targeting a senator for his part in a video that angered Trump.
“So ‘Captain’ Kelly, not only did your sedition video intentionally undercut good order & discipline… but you can’t even display your uniform correctly,” Hegseth railed in an X post. “Your medals are out of order & rows reversed. When/if you are recalled to active duty, it’ll start with a uniform inspection.”
The target of Hegseth’s ire—former astronaut and ex-Navy captain Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly—is under fire from the Trump administration over a video he and five party colleagues who previously served in the military put out last week, calling for active servicepeople not to obey “illegal orders” from Republican leadership.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOUR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump raged on Truth Social last Thursday after learning of the clip, later resharing another user’s post that read: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”
Slamming Kelly and his colleagues in the video as the “Seditious Six,” Hegseth has decried their statements as “despicable, reckless and false.” He has acted on demands from Trump to investigate whether Kelly ought to be recalled into active duty so as to face proceedings before a military tribunal.
As Defense Secretary Hegseth fumed about Kelly’s photo of his medals, users in the comments noted it is “probably a reversed image from the camera.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, picked one of Hegseth’s subordinates, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, to attend talks in Kyiv on how to bring about an end to Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine.
Driscoll was dispatched after Hegseth struggled to move the conversation on from a series of humiliating gaffes and blunders at the Pentagon during his tenure.
Even before the former Fox News host was confirmed in January 2025, his hearings before the Senate were dogged by allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking during his tenure at the network.
Barely months into his role, he became involved in the “Signalgate” scandal. In March, he reportedly posted detailed operational plans for U.S. airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi militants to a Signal group chat—including timing and weapons info—in a thread that included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.
The leak prompted bipartisan alarm and eventually triggered a Pentagon inspector general investigation. Hegseth has denied sharing classified content, calling the messages “general updates.”
Not long after, fresh reporting revealed the defense secretary had installed in his office an unsecured, so-called “dirty” internet line to bypass Pentagon networks and run Signal on a personal computer, raising serious concerns over cybersecurity.
By April, the controversy was compounded when it emerged he had repeated the Signal breach in a second chat, this time including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, again sharing sensitive defense information.
Meanwhile, internal turmoil at the Pentagon has only accelerated with mass firings and top officials being routinely subjected to polygraph tests as part of what’s been described as a rabid crusade to plug leaks of otherwise embarrassing information concerning the secretary’s performance.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the DOD for comment on this story.
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