Pete Hegseth keeps Trump’s favour for now despite fresh missteps

WASHINGTON – In the high-frequency churn of US President Donald Trump’s first term, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s repeated missteps would have fuelled guessing games about his imminent firing. In the second, he has maintained White House support – at least for now.

On Dec 4, a Pentagon inspector-general found that Mr Hegseth

risked endangering US pilots, troops and attack plans

with his decision to send sensitive information in Signal texts.

Days earlier,

he was on the defensive

over his handling of an attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea that raised accusations of war crimes.

They were the latest in a string of mishaps and controversies that have pushed Mr Hegseth into the spotlight since well before he even won confirmation running the Department of Defence. 

Yet Mr Trump has so far stood by the 45-year-old former infantry officer and Fox News host, publicly voicing his support.

Mr Hegseth was seated right next to Mr Trump at a Cabinet meeting on Dec 3, a clear sign of support even before the president said, “Pete’s doing a great job.”

In April, after the initial reports of the Signal chats first emerged, Mr Trump said: “Everybody is happy with him.”

And in 2024, when Mr Hegseth’s nomination appeared in jeopardy over a series of allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual assault, Mr Trump wrote that “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that.”

Mr Hegseth denied the allegations, which he said were part of a smear campaign, while acknowledging, “I’m not a perfect person.”

Mr Hegseth’s staying power breaks with the precedent of Mr Trump’s first term in office, when he went through two confirmed defence secretaries and two acting ones, along with his four national security advisers and four chiefs of staff. 

But it’s very much in keeping with the second term, where Mr Trump has mostly resisted firing his staff – with “Signalgate” merely resulting in his national security advisor Mike Waltz being shuffled to a new role at the United Nations. 

Rather than surrounding himself with highly experienced executives and former officers, the emphasis this time has been more on loyalty and staff who, in the words of his son Donald Trump Jr, “don’t think they know better.”

Mr Hegseth also rallied support beyond Washington among the president’s MAGA base.

With Mr Hegseth, “there are White House people who don’t like him, but it’s really Trump himself who likes his attitude,” former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican, said in an interview. “The more obnoxious he is, the more Trump-like he is – that’s what Trump likes.”

It’s all reminiscent of Mr Trump’s tactics almost exactly a year ago, even before his inauguration, when the administration stuck by Mr Hegseth and pushed his nomination through Congress despite

the assault and alcohol abuse claims

.

At the time, Republicans close to Mr Trump suggested there was a strategy behind that decision.

Mr Hegseth’s nomination, they said, was a test case to see how much Mr Trump could bend Congressional Republicans to his will.

Mr Hegseth had few obvious qualifications for the job and faced deep scepticism from Republicans in Congress. 

In the end, Mr Hegseth won confirmation by a single tie-breaking vote from Vice-President J.D. Vance.

And indeed, it served as a harbinger of Mr Trump’s expansion of executive branch authority with a virtual rubber stamp from the GOP.

Meanwhile, Mr Hegseth cemented his status in the administration as one of Mr Trump’s most vocal and aggressive champions.

Rather than back down, he’s delighted in trolling Democrats and taken up with fervour the MAGA penchant for meme-based online mockery. 

He leaned harder into the military campaign in the Caribbean Sea, posting an image that showed the children’s book character Franklin the turtle blasting a boat with a rocket-propelled grenade.

“For your Christmas wish list,” Mr Hegseth wrote. He denied the Pentagon had done anything wrong with the boat strikes.

“As I’ve said, and I’ll say it again, we’ve only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning the American people,” Mr Hegseth said at Mr Trump’s most recent Cabinet meeting.

Mr Hegseth directed Pentagon resources to Mr Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, pushed to eradicate DEI and other so-called “woke” initiatives and, early in the administration, embraced Mr Elon Musk’s DOGE push.

He kicked reporters out of their Pentagon offices and on Dec 4 oversaw a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony at the Pentagon, with a tribute to Mr Trump thrown in. 

“A couple of months ago, my wife said, ‘Babe, President Trump brought Merry Christmas back, we’re going to bring Christmas back to the Pentagon,’” he said in a social media video about the event.

And Mr Hegseth does retain plenty of support from many of Mr Trump’s allies. Senator Eric Schmitt, the Missouri Republican, called the Pentagon inspector-general’s report about Mr Hegseth’s Signal use a “nothing burger” and part of a “never-ending stream of efforts to undermine Pete Hegseth,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

“I think he’s doing a great job, and it is what it is,” Mr Schmitt said.

The question now is how long that will last.

A recent Fox News poll put Mr Trump’s approval rating at 41 per cent, a sharp dip from two months ago and near the all-time low for Trump of 38 per cent from his first term.

And some of those who supported Mr Hegseth then, such as Senator Thom Tillis, have expressed reservations now.

“President Trump reflexively defends people who are constantly under attack from his critics,” said Mr Kevin Madden, a senior adviser on Mr Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “The things to watch is – do some of the president’s other allies grow weary of explaining or defending or taking attention away from other priorities? I haven’t seen it yet.”

Late on Dec 4, the US military announced it had struck another boat accused of carrying illicit narcotics, this one in the eastern Pacific.

In a brief statement, US Southern Command said the strike came “at the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.” BLOOMBERG