Pete Hegseth’s reliance on using a Donald Trump deflection as allegations of incompetence, criminality and Pentagon infighting continue to grow is starting to wear thin, according to one former Trump White House insider.
The embattled Secretary of Defense is fighting a war on two fronts this week as he fends off accusations of war crimes over the killing of two alleged drug boat survivors who were reportedly clinging to their boat after a U.S. military attack.
At the same time, a damning report from the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) stated that the Pentagon chief violated protocols with his use of the Signal app, which endangered U.S. troops during an assault on Houthi rebels.
According to a report from Jack Detsh of Politico, in order to fend off bad press and investigations into his conduct, the former Fox News personality has been taking a page out of Trump’s MAGA playbook, by criticizing the messenger and not addressing the issues head-on.
As Detch wrote, Hegseth’s strategy can be summed up as, “Attack your enemies, revamp your story and never say you got it wrong.”
Add to that, Hegseth has been quick to fall back on calling anything that portrays him in a bad light as “fake news.”
As the report notes, that may work for Trump, but it’s being overused by the Pentagon chief, who has already has a trust deficit with many less-than-supportive Republican lawmakers.
According to a former senior Trump adviser, “There’s only so many times that you can stand next to the president and label everything as fake news and deny everything. It’s worn out.”
The same official also claimed the strategy doesn’t work for the defense secretary because of his reputation.
“When he takes this approach of, ‘this is fake news,’ and then hits back with some type of a troll…that only reinforces his biggest liability, which is that he’s unqualified for the job,” they explained. “That just reinforces that he’s not serious.”
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