The moment the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s nomination for defence secretary, the Pentagon community knew it was in trouble.
One horrified defence official said at the time: ‘He may have been educated at Princeton and Harvard, but does he know anything about running a huge organisation like the Pentagon? No, he doesn’t.’
As both Trump and Hegseth have said in recent days, the Pentagon establishment was against this controversial appointment from the beginning and have claimed this is why the defence department is going through its current turmoil, with summary sackings, accusations of intimidation and unauthorised leaks to sympathetic, ‘establishment’ newspapers.
There is a degree of truth in this.
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