The U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marks the first major test for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s overhauled Pentagon press corps, a crop of right-wing influencers and media personalities that took over the coverage desks of traditional news organizations, whose journalists surrendered their Pentagon credentials months ago rather than agree to restrictions on their reporting.
The newly represented outlets have produced no scoops, but they weren’t necessarily looking for any. “No leaks. No scoops … No elaborate stories built around scraps of rumor,” wrote John Konrad of the maritime website gCaptain on X, asking his readers to “give ALL your thanks to the military members who risked their lives capturing Maduro.”
The thinner coverage from the Pentagon’s handpicked correspondents comes during one of the most consequential military operations in recent history. Mainstream journalists have continued to cover the events from the outside, though some of them say the additional challenges they face in getting answers from government leaders could erode their ability to shed light on the aftermath of Maduro’s capture. The New York Times sued the Pentagon last month, saying the press policy violates its First and Fifth Amendment rights.
Pentagon officials have argued that previously credentialed journalists “chose to self-deport” and that their replacements are up to the task. “We want to make sure that we have the absolute best people … on board and willing to serve our commander in chief,” press secretary Kingsley Wilson said last month.
A group of new and old press corps members accompanied Hegseth to the first stop on his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour of domestic military industry sites, which kicked off Monday in Newport News, Virginia. They included Konrad as well as the Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood, Heather Mullins of MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s media company LindellTV, and Christian Broadcasting Network’s Caitlin Burke.
CNN sent a team that shared its video with other mainstream television networks, and a Fox News reporter was on the trip too. Neither CNN nor Fox News can report from the Pentagon itself, having turned in their credentials.
This fusion of new and old press corps didn’t lead to any increased availability. “Hegseth descended the stairs at 4:34, he did not answer a shouted question from your pool on if he supported putting boots on the ground in Venezuela,” CNN reporter Haley Britzky wrote in a pool report late afternoon Monday. “That’s the last we’ll see of him today.”
However meager their access to Hegseth, the newer members of the press corps had ample praise for him. On the Virginia trip Monday, Konrad posted a video of the defense secretary in front of a recruiting center. “I voted so hard for this,” he wrote on X, accompanied by an American flag emoji.
On Monday night, Konrad, who wrote last month that Hegseth reminded him of his father and had a “thousand watt lightbulb of charisma,” warned that “fake news hit pieces” were in the works about him and that traditional journalists were upset about his opportunity to cover the Pentagon. “HOW DARE they not invite someone who drop hundreds of thousands on a J-school degree instead!!” he wrote on X.
The Federalist’s Fleetwood shared photos of Hegseth speaking to sailors and swearing in military recruits. His two previous articles for the right-wing news site included a list of the “10 biggest media hoaxes of 2025” and an essay titled, “Ladies, You’re Loading The Dishwasher All Wrong. Here’s How To Do It The Right Way.”
Mullins commended Hegseth for his speech in Newport News, in which he championed American shipbuilding with a remark about how Jesus was a carpenter, not a politician. “Can we just take a minute to appreciate the fact that we have a Secretary of War that thinks of Jesus in the middle of his speech to American shipbuilders? Christ is King!” Mullins wrote on X.
After posting a live feed of Trump’s White House news conference Saturday, Mullins reposted a comment saying the U.S. should “do to Minneapolis what we just did to Venezuela” and added, “I can name at least 5 other American cities occupied by Maduro like criminals.”
Fleetwood, Konrad, and Mullins did not respond to requests for comment. Burke declined to comment.
In a statement, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Pentagon “chooses reporters to travel at will, usually on a rotation basis to ensure credentialed and noncredentialed press get equal opportunity to cover special events — or if their area of reporting is relevant to the events Secretary Hegseth is attending.”
The right-wing outlets that have signed the Pentagon’s press rules have mostly applauded the Venezuela operation in recent days.
The Gateway Pundit wrote that it was a “stunning operation by US forces” and a “historical milestone for our continent.”
Breanna Morello, who often appears as a host on Alex Jones’s Infowars, wrote: “I’m not normally for regime change strikes, but there’s something very endearing about bombing Hugo Chavez’s dead body.”
Similarly, activist Jack Posobiec told Stephen K. Bannon, “I fully support the policy of black-bagging communists and taking them down to Guantánamo,” though he questioned what comes next in terms of possible regime change in Venezuela.
The Venezuela strike, however, has exposed some fault lines within the right-wing news media, fueling unease among some Trump supporters who argued the foreign intervention strays from “America First” ideals and could lead to a disastrous regime change.
Megyn Kelly, one of the loudest voices on the online right, criticized her former employer Fox News, saying its coverage “was like watching Russian propaganda” with “nothing skeptical” and “all rah-rah cheerleading.” Fox News did not respond to a request for comment about Kelly’s remarks.
Dave Smith, a podcaster and political commentator who endorsed Trump during the last election, told Theo Von in an interview published Tuesday that the Venezuela operation was “an intolerable humiliation” and “one more example of Donald Trump just siding with the war hawks over his own people.”
Some far-right influencers pushed even further, with Owen Shroyer, a former Infowars host saying support for the move showed that the MAGA base had become a “slop-eating sheeple” cult.
The post Hegseth’s remade press corps covers Venezuela raid with praise, not probing appeared first on Washington Post.
