White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned that President Donald Trump “stands strongly” behind Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, even amid a brand new bombshell report and a scathing op ed from a former prime Pentagon spokesperson.
“That is what occurs when the whole Pentagon is working towards you and towards the monumental change you are attempting to implement,” Leavitt mentioned on Fox & Mates this morning.
On Sunday, The New York Instances and different retailers reported that Hegseth, the previous co-host of Fox & Mates Weekend, shared particulars of U.S. assault plans on Houthi rebels in Yemen on one other Sign group chat that included his spouse, brother and private lawyer. Hegseth had shared these plans on aother Sign group that with prime Trump administration officers and, mistakenly, The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.
Additionally on Sunday, John Ullyot, a Trump loyalist who served as chief Pentagon spokesperson, wrote in an op ed in Politico that the “final month has been a full-blown meltdown on the Pentagon — and it’s changing into an actual drawback for the administration.”
“There are very doubtless extra footwear to drop in brief order, with even larger bombshell tales coming this week, key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately,” wrote Ullyot, whereas all however predicting that Hegseth’s days are numbered.
On Friday, three senior aides — Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll — had been fired, with media experiences that they had been concerned in leaking delicate data. However the subsequent day, they launched a press release saying that “unnamed Pentagon officers have slandered our character with baseless assaults on our manner out the door.” Ullyot wrote that “Hegseth’s crew has developed a behavior of spreading flat-out, simply debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their manner out the door.”
Trump himself has not but commented, however Leavitt mentioned blamed the scenario on unnamed Pentagon officers. “They’re leaking and they’re mendacity to the mainstream media,” she mentioned.
