The Department of Defense is experiencing a “full-blown meltdown” under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, according to a recently resigned top Pentagon aide.
Following a month of “total chaos” at the Defense Department, from mass firings to leaked Signal chats featuring top officials within Donald Trump’s administration discussing bombing campaigns in Yemen, “there are very likely more shoes to drop in short order,” according to John Ullyot, who resigned last week as a top Pentagon spokesperson.
Last month, it was revealed that national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a Signal chat group with other top officials, including Hegseth, who shared details about military strikes in Yemen.
Hegseth also reportedly shared details about the imminent attack targeting Houthis in Yemen to a second group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
The Pentagon is experiencing a ‘full-blown meltdown’ under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, according to a former top aide (EPA)
According to Ullyot, Hegseth last week fired three top advisers and chiefs of staff, including a top aide who requested an investigation into Pentagon leaks, following February’s purge of top military officers, including the now-former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chief of naval operations.
In a statement, Hegseth’s now-former chief of staff Darin Selnick, senior adviser Dan Caldwell as well as the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, Colin Carroll, said they “are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended.”
“Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door,” they wrote last week.
Hegseth’s team has “developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door,” Ullyot wrote in Politico.
More firings are expected, according to Ullyot.
Chaos inside the Defense Department — which commands roughly 3 million service members and personnel with an $850 billion budget while the United States is embroiled in global conflicts in a period of escalating tensions — “is now a major distraction for the president,” Ullyot wrote.
“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer,” he added.
Hegseth has repeatedly blamed the press for any suggestion there’s disorder inside the Pentagon while casting allegations from his own top aides as the work of disgruntled former employees.
“What a big surprise that a bunch of… a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax [and] won’t give back their Pulitzers — they got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies,” Hegseth said from outside the White House on April 21.
“This is what the media does,” he said. “They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insists that the president “stands strongly” behind Hegseth and suggested that the administration believes Pentagon employees are working “against” it.
“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” Leavitt told Fox & Friends on Fox News on April 21.
“Secretary Hegseth was nominated for this position because he is standing up for the war fighter — the men and women in uniform who are putting their lives on the line to protect our country and our homeland,” she added. “And unfortunately, there have been people at that building who don’t like the change the secretary is trying to bring, so they are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media.”
This is a developing story
