Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, thwarted what appeared to be, at worst, a political hit job and, at best, a shocking display of incompetence by the U.S. Military Academy earlier this week. He posted on his X account about having knowledge of a story that was going to be released by ProPublica, claiming that the former Fox News co-host was never offered admission to West Point. To preemptively refute the story, he showed a copy of his 1999 acceptance letter from West Point.
“We understand that ProPublica (the Left Wing hack group) is planning to publish a knowingly false report that I was not accepted to West Point in 1999,” Hegseth posted. “Here’s my letter of acceptance signed by West Point Superintendent, Lieutenant General Daniel Christman, U.S. Army.”
Hegseth wound up attending Princeton University instead, graduating in 2003. Later, he served as an Army National Guard officer, which included deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. His foresight to post the letter was a savvy maneuver that led to vindication — or what would have been vindication if the ProPublica story had been released. In response, the U.S. Military Academy released a statement acknowledging the error and offering an apology to the defense secretary nominee.
“A review of our records indicates Peter Hegseth was offered admission to West Point in 1999 but did not attend,” the West Point Directorate of Communications told the Washington Examiner. “An incorrect statement involving Hegseth’s admission to the U.S. Military Academy was released by an employee on Dec. 10, 2024. Upon further review of an archived database, employees realized this statement was in error. Hegseth was offered acceptance to West Point as a prospective member of the Class of 2003. The academy takes this situation seriously and apologizes for this administrative error.”
But how could such a thing happen? And when such things happen, why does it take for Hegseth to post a picture of his acceptance letter to West Point over an anticipated story published by ProPublica? This should have been easily verifiable, especially given that “Hegseth” is not the most common last name. One would suspect that compared to someone hypothetically named Peter Smith, Peter Johnson, or Peter Williams, there aren’t too many Peter Hegseths in West Point’s files.
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What happened with Hegseth is alarming. A meticulous investigation should be conducted into this so-called mistake, as one could reasonably assume that it was not a mistake but rather an agenda-driven political attack. Obviously, there is no definitive proof, but the fact that multiple stories reflect negatively on Trump or his allies, yet they have turned out to be false, happens too much to be a coincidence. Moreover, such “errors” or “mistakes” rarely, if at all, occur in Trump’s favor. They are always stories that seek to damage his credibility, reputation, or the reputation of his allies, never “errors” or “mistakes” that are beneficial.
As the saying goes, “One time is a mistake, two times is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern.” Enough with the patterns. It’s time to investigate how the West Point “mistake” happened with Hegseth — and, if we are being honest, there should also be an investigation into why such things seem to regularly keep happening to Trump and his allies.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
