Thanks to new reporting coming out of both Politico and the Wall Street Journal, we have a little bit more clarity on the sort of state of mind of Pete Hegseth, a state of mind that over the last ten years or so, probably can rarely be described as clarity. But anyway, he's got a lot of chaos going on in the Pentagon, and he's [00:00:19] increasingly worried about how that's going to be perceived by the white House, in particular by Donald Trump, who doesn't necessarily like when one of his lackeys continually causes problems, makes things look like they're not going smoothly, and also seems to be infested by leakers. And so Pete Hegseth is trying to get a handle on the situation. [00:00:38] He apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, is very concerned that he could be fired. And in particular, he's worried that all of these leaks coming out could help lead to that situation. One leak in particular that we'll talk about being very high up on that list of concerns. Apparently, every new leak of sensitive Pentagon operations or planning [00:00:56] induce new concerns and fears in Hegseth. I don't know if that's just the leaks from other people or when he, like, wakes up in the morning and realizes, oh God, I signaled again. I don't know if it's that sort of leak, but he has a lot to be concerned about. Apparently he, once the Elon Musk China briefing, came out, [00:01:15] the leak revealing that Elon Musk was going behind Donald Trump's back and getting this secretive information that could potentially benefit him personally and financially, he yelled at Admiral Christopher Grady, I'll hook you up to an effing polygraph. That apparently did not actually happen, which as a leader, [00:01:31] not a good call to be making threats if you're not going to go through on them. But but he did go on to accuse a number of other people of the leak, including Lieutenant General Doug Sims, the joint staff director, who Hegseth also apparently threatened with a polygraph. I don't know if that one actually happened, but it's not a good sign [00:01:50] in your first 100 days in charge of an organization, when you're going through the hallways yelling at people that you're gonna give them a lie detector test, at least I don't think. And so we've got the the Elon Musk China briefing. That was a big leak. We had, signal gate one that was mostly Jeffrey Goldberg, of course, who revealed [00:02:05] that one there was the second signal gate scandal when we found out that he was sharing the same sort of classified, sensitive information with his wife and his brother and his personal lawyer. Now, we also found out about a third signal issue, alleging that Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection [00:02:21] on his personal computer that bypassed the Pentagon's security protocols so that he could use signal. This dude loves signal more than I have ever loved an app in my life, and it might be his downfall. Dude, just uninstall it. Try WhatsApp, you know, try the messages app. [00:02:37] They're perfectly good. You can leak all sorts of sensitive information. You can endanger the lives of our pilots on, you know, the iMessage or whatever. It doesn't have to be signal. But anyway, there's other issues too floating around that we're going to discuss. So he brings his wife to these sensitive meetings with foreign military officials. [00:02:54] I'm not going to criticize Pete Hegseth over that. I don't even think it's his option. I don't think she's going to let him be alone for more than a few minutes. Considering all the allegations that have been floating around, we found out that they spent something like. Or they had plans to spend $40,000 setting up a make up booth for Pete [00:03:09] Hegseth in the Pentagon, and also that they had been working on military plans for a takeover of the Panama Canal. And we come out of this with some staff still around, although they've been a bit shaken by the polygraph being waved in front of their face. He doesn't have a chief of staff. He doesn't have a deputy chief of staff. [00:03:27] He doesn't have a senior advisor. So this isn't great at this point. I mean, we've seen this sort of chaos in the Trump White House before, but I feel like it took longer than 100 days the first time around. Yeah, I think it did actually take longer than 100 days. The other thing about Pete Hegseth is, first of all, the people you don't, [00:03:43] if you're afraid of getting fired, you don't piss off the generals, because the generals are the ones that can put the pressure on to get you out of there. They can go to people who go to the president. It's it's not that difficult to make that happen. [00:03:58] And so that's mistake number. You know, it's a high number for but it's in this situation it's a major mistake. So threatening these polygraph tests and threatening members of the uniformed military with them is the wrong way for the civilian leadership to go when it comes to the Pentagon. [00:04:16] The other thing about Hegseth is, and you think about this all the time, had he not been confirmed, it would not have been the end of any Senate career. It would not have been the end of the president's mission. Right? He would have put somebody else in there. This is all on the hands of the Republican senators, who were too afraid to vote [00:04:35] against a nominee of the president, that it is a a sickness in our politics, that you cannot do, that we would have another secretary of defense who would have gone through a rigorous hearing, who would have probably gotten every Republican to vote for them, maybe some Democrats, because the Republicans would have already voted against Hegseth, [00:04:53] who is clearly not qualified. So it's time to have a little bit of spine when you're going up against these foolish nominees for positions. And Donald Trump would be on a plane to Russia, right to Italy right now to, to to, to go to the funeral. He wouldn't be thinking about his secretary of defense. [00:05:11] The Defense Department wouldn't be thinking about no Republican senator would think, oh, God. You know, I really I'm still so upset about Hegseth not passing. It would have been in the wind. Dust gone. And that's that's the the root of all this stuff. Yeah. Jordan. Yeah. [00:05:26] I mean, I'm thinking back to January 2024, when then Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went to the hospital and didn't disclose it for a few days, and Trump and Republicans were calling for his removal from office. [00:05:42] And while it's like, kind of weird, you would want, people, especially the president and others in the cabinet to know he's in the hospital. I don't know if it's as serious as Republicans tried to make it out to be. And then you look at everything that Hegseth is doing multiple unsecure [00:06:00] signal chats, his his personal cell phone and full name being used on an offshore betting site that is totally vulnerable, allows foreign adversaries to easily access his information, his phone, his data, all of the security [00:06:18] risks that he is bringing on himself. Like, to be clear, this isn't just like, act like like targeted attacks or targeted surveillance. He's just inviting it himself. And to look at how they responded to Lloyd Austin, [00:06:34] largely because he was just black. That's why they didn't like him from the beginning, because he was black. And then you look at Hegseth, who is totally unqualified, and you could criticize Lloyd Austin for US foreign policy under his leadership. Of course, that's totally fair. [00:06:49] But the knock on him was never about his race. Like it should never have been about his race. And Pete Hegseth is somebody who doesn't deserve this position. Only got it because he kissed Trump's ass on Fox News for years, and Trump saw him on the TV and liked him because he has a baby brain, and that's how he operates. [00:07:07] And he's good looking and he's good looking and he's good looking. And that matters to Donald Trump. Seriously, though. I mean, that is something. Esthetics matter more to this president than a lot of things. And Hegseth is the the living example. And listen, I think Lloyd Austin was not above reproach. [00:07:24] I think that that was a really bad thing he did when he didn't let anybody know that he went into the hospital. I don't know that it would have been grounds for removal, certainly grounds for criticism and investigation and a conversation. But and for the president to have reacted. But again, that this you're allowed to criticize these people. [00:07:43] This guy has no business being at the Department of Defense and the Republican senators knew it. If you went to them off the record and you asked them about it, they would have said, yeah, this isn't a good pick, but we're going to vote for him anyway, you know? Yeah, 100%. They went along with it and now it's causing all this trouble for them. [00:07:59] And what do you get for the trouble? What's that vantage of Pete I don't understand. That's what I was saying. Like what? Especially when there were so many good alternative candidates hosting shows on Fox. You could add Doocy, you could add Kilmeade, and instead you wasted on this guy. I'll never understand it. [00:08:15] But anyway, Doocy was a nice guy when I was an NBC page. I'm digressing here for a second. He had a show called House party, which was a terrible show, but it required pages to seat the audience, and I was one of the pages, and he was always very nice to the pages and very conversant. And so Pete Doocy, when I see him on the road, when I first met him, [00:08:32] I told him that story and he he said, I always when he sees me, we have nothing else to talk about. So he says, I told my dad that story. I know you've told me 11 times. You told your dad that story. Yeah. Interesting. In any event, one of the ways I'll end on this graphic seven one of the ways [00:08:47] that they're trying to sort of like rebuild Hesketh's reputation back up is they're focused on building an aura around Hegseth by pushing out videos of his memo signings and early morning workouts, causing fears from current and former defense officials that some of the less photo worthy events could face delays because he's too busy [00:09:05] having his photo taken. That'll definitely take eyes off the makeup booth story that you're doing. - All. - These workout fitness photos. But honestly, I want him to do as many of these as possible because if he's spending all of his time, like doing curls, getting that pump, then he's not pursuing his lifelong quest to kill all the Muslims [00:09:25] as he screamed once at a party. And he's not trying to start a hot war with Iran or whatever, because we cannot be distracted too much by all the shallow like dumb donkey stuff that he does. He's also on the substance to the extent that he ever thinks about the substance. - He's terrible in that stuff too. - Right. [00:09:44] So anyway, we'll see what ends up happening with him. - We do have a poll. - When he's on substance. You have to you have to be careful that you're talking about substantive issues, right. And so we have a poll. How long will Hegseth keep his job? A week, a month, a year, or he won't get fired, which is possible. [00:10:01] Few people make it all the way in a Trump administration, but I guess it could happen. People seem to think either he's sticking around or a month. - Okay, so that's not bad. - I'm gonna say I don't know. I don't know, I have no idea. I will say though, I mean, I hadn't known about the, the, the gambling thing [00:10:17] that Jordan mentioned, but with his gambling, with his substance abuse, with his allegations of sexual assault against him, the infidelity, his wild, bizarre statements and his complete lack of knowledge about what constitutes secure communications. Has there ever been a more readily blackmailable member [00:10:35] of the US government than this guy? Well, I'm, I'm a little resentful that you're lumping in gambling with those other horrible things. So, I'm not saying it's objectively bad. I'm just saying it leads to people having bad things happen with the mob and. [00:10:51] With the gambling and the drugs and the sexual assault. Wait wait wait wait wait wait. I ranked them by how bad they are. It got progressively less bad. Okay. All right. But anyway, No, he's just. He's got a lot of issues. He's also an idiot. And he really wants to be popular. 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