Pete Hegseth’s own former top Pentagon spokesman went on CNN and shredded the defense secretary as a “Fox News fire breather” who was unfit for the job from the start.
John Ullyot, who stepped down from his role as the Defense Department’s top communications official in the spring of 2025, sat down with Erin Burnett just hours after Hegseth narrowly survived an impeachment push on the House floor. Eleven House Democrats missed the 211-204 vote, handing Republicans the margin they needed to shelve the articles.
The impeachment resolution was drafted by outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who charged Hegseth with “high crimes and misdemeanors” across eight articles, including waging war in Iran without congressional authorization.
Pointing to the combative news conference Hegseth held the same day, Ullyot told Burnett the defense secretary “looked like a Fox News fire breather, frankly, or a cable news fire breather who is trying to get a point across.”
“So he’s essentially somebody who is, he makes it about himself, not about the troops,” Ullyot said. “He actually likes … to have the focus on him.”
“It’s as if he’s on a set of Fox News. And what I’ve said … is that the president deserves better than that,” he added.
Ullyot’s new book, The President Deserves Better, traces what the publisher calls the “downward spiral” of Hegseth at Defense and David Shulkin at Veterans Affairs, both accused of putting their own priorities ahead of the president’s.
The criticism carries extra weight because Ullyot is a longtime Trump loyalist who served as a senior adviser on the 2016 campaign and in both terms of the administration. He told Burnett that Trump “doesn’t need this headache” with two years left on the clock, and that the president does not fully grasp “how much of a drag” his defense secretary has become.
Ullyot also argued that Hegseth built “a career as a bombastic guy on Fox News” who “likes to throw bombs,” and should have warned Trump from the outset that he was “not the unifying figure you need.”
Hegseth’s confirmation itself was a near-miss, salvaged only when Vice President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking Senate vote. Ullyot suggested the military wins Hegseth continues to tout as personal victories would have happened no matter who was running the Pentagon.
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