Pete Hegseth Used His Kids as Props in Bizarre Response to SignalGate 2.0
Apparently, there's literally no one Pete Hegseth won't send state secrets to.
Photo: Screenshot LatestPolitics
The revelation that Pete Hegseth shared classified military information over a Signal chat that accidentally included a literal journalist and was rife with embarrassing emoji usage should have been career-ending. Nonetheless, he managed to coast by after comical promises from the administration that Elon Musk would investigate what went wrong—as if it were some complex system error from Signal and not just pervasive incompetence across Trump administration officials. But now, here we are, not one month later and Hegseth is back in form: that is, caught inappropriately sharing state secrets with more people on Signal, an unauthorized, not-secure platform. Welcome to SignalGate Part 2, everyone!
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that, in March, Hegseth also shared the classified plan to airstrike Yemen with his wife, his brother, a former Fox News producer, and his personal attorney. The chat had about a dozen other people in it, as well. Per the Times, Hegseth shared “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.” If I had a nickel for every time Pete Hegseth got caught sharing state secrets in a non-secure chat full of randos, I’d have two nickels.
Hegseth is now in full-on attack mode. In a series of heated remarks bizarrely given in front of the White House while using his own children as props, Hegseth decried the NYT reporters as “hoaxsters,” a very Trumpian word I’ve not heard before, and said, “These kids right here, this is why we’re fighting the fake news media.” The NYT described his kids as “gathered awkwardly behind him.” But if you want to talk about awkward, don’t even get me started on his hair-do.
Before that, when the Democratic Party tweeted from its official account that Hegseth should step down, he offered the unhinged reply, “Your agenda is illegals, trans & DEI—all of which are no longer allowed.” Hegseth didn’t even bother denying wrongdoing; his only defense of his egregious incompetence, misconduct, and addiction to sharing state secrets was transphobia—which is very much a microcosm of the Trump administration’s approach to… everything.
Pete Hegseth has one sideburn. did the other one get shaved off as a prank or what?