By all accounts, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a drunk, a gossip and an abuser of women. He is so profoundly incapable of leading the Pentagon, and it’s extremely obvious to everyone watching him or interacting with him. Donald Trump appointed him because Hegseth “looked good on TV” and that was his sole qualification. As it turned out, Hegseth is just another psycho with brain rot, playing around with white nationalist symbols, hiring his relatives to high-level Pentagon positions and encouraging his Fox News-employed third wife to sit in on classified meetings. Now it also looks like Hegseth was regularly including his family in highly classified group chats:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat. Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders. Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

[From The NY Times]

Almost simultaneously to this new reporting about yet another group chat where the SecDef is spreading close-hold military gossip, Politico reports that Hegseth’s recent purge has left the Pentagon in disarray, and people believe that Hegseth will probably be fired sometime soon.

The Pentagon is in “total chaos” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is unlikely to remain in his role, according to its former top spokesperson, who painted a scene of dysfunction, backstabbing and continuous missteps at the highest levels of the department.

“The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” John Ullyot wrote Sunday in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece. “The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”

Ullyot, who resigned from the Pentagon last week, described a department in collapse. He accused Hegseth’s team of “falsehoods” about why three top officials were fired last week, saying they hadn’t leaked sensitive information to the media. He chastised Pentagon officials for how they handled revelations that Hegseth shared sensitive military information in a Signal chat, and he pointed to other leaks that caused embarrassment to the administration.

The remarkable accusations by a former official — who left only two days ago and insists he still supports the Trump administration’s national security policies — underscores the infighting and upheaval that has turned increasingly public in recent weeks. But he also found himself in the center of several controversies that added to that chaos. Ullyot was sidelined after he defended the removal in March of a story discussing the service of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, part of a larger purge of diversity-related military webpages.

“The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration,” he wrote.

The Pentagon on Friday fired top staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff will also leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official.

[From Politico]

For the past three months, it’s just been an endless stream of “holy sh-t, we’re so f–ked” moments, but I wish people would understand that a “Pentagon purge” is actually really terrifying. These are not political appointees, these are not people who need to take some kind of screwed-up loyalty oath to Trump or Hegseth. These are almost always career military officials or military-adjacent bureaucrats who are in charge of the largest defense budgets in the world. Even if Hegseth was somehow fired – and who knows if he will be – he’s done irreparable harm to the Pentagon in just three months.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.