Last summer, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth struggled to respond to the Signal group chat scandal, several news reports cited various sources in the Pentagon who helped expose the seriousness of the former Fox News host’s carelessness. The underlying controversy was obviously important, but so, too, was the story behind the story: It was clear that there were officials within the Defense Department who were not fans of Hegseth.

In the weeks and months that followed, similar evidence emerged. In October, for example, a conservative newspaper called The Washington Times reported that military officers and Defense Department officials agreed the secretary had “lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders,” with moves “widely seen as unprofessional.”

The same report added, “Inside the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth’s tenure has been tumultuous. The level of turnover among high-ranking officers and civilian officials has not been seen in recent history. Sources described an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, with hirings and firings sometimes seeming to come out of nowhere.”

The earlier reporting came to mind when The Washington Post reported on the enormous gap between Hegseth’s claims about Iran’s wartime military capabilities and reality. The defense secretary, for example, boasted about “complete control of Iranian skies” and “uncontested airspace,” shortly before Iran shot down an American F-15E fighter jet. From the Post’s report:

The chaotic but successful rescue mission has become the clearest indication yet that Hegseth’s repeated claims of air dominance come with serious caveats, and has reinforced concerns inside the Trump administration that his messaging about the war is overly optimistic and risks misinforming both the public and the president.

‘Pete is not speaking truth to the president,’ one administration official said. ‘As a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information.’

Quotes like these haven’t been independently verified by MS NOW, and the underlying significance of Hegseth making false claims, to the public and the president, is clear.

But the Post’s report, which went on to note internal Pentagon documents that exposed some of Hegseth’s claims as false, reinforced impressions that the secretary is working alongside some officials who apparently hold him in low regard.

As my MS NOW colleague James Downie put it, “The knives are well and truly out for Hegseth.”

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