Pete Hegseth and his former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host accidentally matched during a softball segment in which the defense secretary gave a tour of the Pentagon Monday.
He also repeatedly insisted to his former Fox News colleague Will Cain that he takes operational security “seriously.”
Hegseth, whose tenure as Defense Secretary has been plagued by a series of scandals over how he and other members of the Trump administration communicate about sensitive national security information, instead pointed to the outcome of his military strikes to prove that he had acted responsibly.
“I’d point to the success of the Houthi campaign, first of all,” Hegseth said when asked how he would respond to Americans questioning his use of the encrypted messaging app Signal. The defense secretary inadvertently revealed battle plans to The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg earlier this year after then-National Security Adviser added him to a Trump administration group chat.
“But second of all, I wish people could see how we operate at the Pentagon,” he told Cain, who wore a matching red tie and blue suit for the interview. “I wish they could. I wish those I serve with and work with everyday could see how seriously we take every aspect of operational security, from the way we communicate, to the way we transmit information, to the orders we give, to the plans we discuss.”
Hegseth said classification protocols are in place for a good reason.
“Nobody takes that more seriously than me,” he told Cain outside the Pentagon. “If there’s one thing I’ve been offended by—I don’t get offended by much… it’s this idea that I don’t take classification or I don’t take clearances seriously. Nobody takes it more seriously than me. And we make sure that is infused through how we operate. And we do everything we can to deliver on behalf of the American people that way.”
Cain: This was not planned. This is embarrassing.Hegseth: No, I think it’s beautiful pic.twitter.com/VQDa48z4fU
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 19, 2025
Earlier in the show, Cain—who defended the administration’s Signal usage from the get-go—rolled a clip of the two inside the building, where Hegseth reiterated this point.
“We take operational security extremely seriously, leaks extremely seriously. We have national security implications,” he said, adding that he feels confident about the current personnel situation after considerable shake-ups over the first 100 days, which were partly a result of investigations into media leaks.
“I couldn’t feel better about the condition of the staff we have both on the military side and the uniform side to deliver for the president’s agenda,” he said.
Also during Monday’s broadcast of The Will Cain Show, the namesake host was shown Hegseth’s office and was escorted down portrait-lined hallways.
The two overlapped as co-hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend from 2020 until last November, when Trump nominated Hegseth to be Defense Secretary. In January, Cain moved from the weekend gig to the 4 p.m. weekday hour—anchor Neil Cavuto’s old time slot.
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