A new wave of Pentagon press corps members filled with MAGA mouthpieces has been mocked for not even managing to report which desks they will be using accurately.
Far-right activist Laura Loomer and figures from conservative outlets RedState and Fearless Media were among the new batch of Pete Hegseth–approved Pentagon reporters granted in-house access at the military headquarters.
The ragtag mix of MAGA influencers and conspiracy theorists was brought in to replace established reporters from major news outlets—including The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Fox News, and CNN—who quit the Pentagon press corps rather than comply with the Defense Department’s new rules restricting access and coverage, including demanding they only publish information the Pentagon approves of.
On Monday, the new Pentagon press corps was allowed into its workspace, with several members boasting on X that they had been assigned the desk previously occupied by Washington Post military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe.
“The Washington Post and Dan Lamothe used to occupy this desk inside the Pentagon press room,” a gleeful Loomer posted to her 1.8 million X followers. “Now it’s mine!”
However, similar boasts about claiming Lamothe’s former desk were also made by RedState’s R.C. Maxwell, as well as right-wing content creators Cam Higby and Lance Johnston.
In a series of posts, Lamothe mocked the group for all claiming the same desk, writing, “Y’all are going to have to work this one out for yourselves,” and, “By my count, I’ve got at least two or three desks left at the Pentagon. Lost count.”
Lamothe added that the Post had actually “given up” the desk the influencers believed they had taken from him back in March and that the paper had “floated among empty desks after that.”
In response to Maxwell’s boast, the Post’s Pentagon correspondent Tara Copp wrote: “You should talk to Laura Loomer unless y’all are all just going to share the same desk.”
Several other reporters also mocked the Hegseth-picked Pentagon corps for getting basic facts wrong about where they were working.
“Kinda seems like the Pentagon’s press office is so contemptuous of the new propaganda corps (fair) that they’re telling everyone they got the Post’s old desk (and the propaganda corps is eating it up),” wrote Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters.
Aidan McLaughlin, the Washington correspondent for Vanity Fair, added: “New Pentagon press corps is botching their first big story.”
To their credit, both Johnston and Higby—an activist for Today is America who has also contributed to Turning Point USA’s Frontlines—admitted they had been duped after being informed online that they were actually sitting at Bloomberg’s old desk.
“We were told it was WaPo,” Higby posted. “The point is: we’re in, you’re out.”
Lamothe described Higby’s walkback as the “first correction from the new press corps.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Higby, Loomer, and Maxwell for comment.
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