Hegseth needs to clean up his sloppy operation

Of course, it didn’t need to. Trump had just been elected decisively — the electorate had given him the right to fill out his Cabinet as he saw fit.

But from the beginning, valid questions about character and competence have shadowed Hegseth. A series of morally sordid episodes from his recent past emerged that demonstrated, at the minimum, a penchant for reckless behavior. Of course, many notable figures in Washington, present and past, have housed similar skeletons. But character and competence are nonnegotiable for a man with a resume as relatively light as Hegseth’s.

He aced his confirmation hearing against bumbling foes and squeaked through the Senate 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker.

The Signal flap, in which Hegseth shared classified intelligence — if detailing launch times isn’t classified information, what is, exactly? — on an encrypted messaging app during a chat that unfortunately included a hostile journalist, reinforced the perception that Hegseth is in over his head. Beyond the intelligence leak, which may have been enough to sink a normal defense secretary in normal times, Hegseth’s bearing in the leaked transcript — “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading, it’s PATHETIC,” and “we are GO for a mission launch” — screamed pundit, not statesman.

It is, of course, wonderful that the mission went according to plan. But that our adversaries caught a glimpse of the all-caps, emoji-laden text thread is less so.

Hegseth’s attempt to “own the libs” his way out of trouble following reports of the leak reinforced the lightweight vibe. Rather than own up to mistakes and call for an investigation into the breach, Hegseth went full Fox.

“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes,” he said of the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a crush of reporters on a tarmac. “This is a guy that peddles in garbage.”

To be sure, he’s right about Goldberg’s track record. But to label the episode a “hoax” when it clearly wasn’t — even the White House verified the authenticity of the Signal chat — was Biden-esque. Our eyes weren’t lying. The jittery dodge cheapened the many real media hoaxes of Trump’s era and diminished Hegseth under the crush of cameras.

The Signal flap is only one in a series of concerning incidents for the Pentagon boss. Another came over the weekend, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Hegseth brought his wife, a former Fox producer, to at least two meetings with foreign military counterparts during which sensitive intelligence was shared. Attendees at such meetings are normally limited to people with security clearances. Sens. Roger Wicker (R-MI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) have requested the Defense Department Inspector General launch an investigation into the matter. Hegseth has denied the story.

A DC WHODUNIT: WHO ADDED JEFFREY GOLDBERG?

It’s difficult to say whether his wife joining highly sensitive meetings is more concerning than Hegseth’s invitation to right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec to join his February trip to Germany, Belgium, and Poland — Posobiec, of Pizzagate fame, opted for a trip to Ukraine with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instead — or whether Hegseth’s brother Phil’s new appointment as a Department of Homeland Security liaison is appropriate given his background as a podcast producer.

Months in, Hegseth’s operation reeks of sloppiness, which is fine for a pundit or even a government leader farther down the organizational chart. But not for a defense secretary. He needs to clean it up — fast.