Skip to main content

See Trump make a mistake? No you didn't.

Chris Brennan   Paste BN

We’re now past the three-month mark for Donald Trump’s second presidency, and we can be sure, in very tumultuous times, of three things:

Pete Hegseth proved all that for us this week, as the embattled secretary of Defense desperately tried to save himself by lying about his many mistakes during his brief tenure at the Pentagon.

You’ve probably already heard about Hegseth’s dangerous habit of sharing highly sensitive military plans via the phone app Signal. Check your phone. Chances are, he looped you in.

But Hegseth has also been grappling with a growing personnel problem at the Pentagon, reassigning his chief of staff and firing three top aides.

Hegseth and Team Trump try to brush that off by casting the ousted aides as deep-state “leakers” trying to disrupt the administration. They warn of investigations and potential criminal cases.

Here’s what they don’t say: All of these jokers were pulled from Hegseth’s own deck. These aren’t people he inherited from the last secretary of defense. They’re not longtime Pentagon staffers. They’re Hegseth’s people, installed by Hegseth before being ousted by Hegseth.

Acknowledging all that, which, as I said, we can all see, would be admitting a mistake. Team Trump does not do that.

So we get Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, appearing on Fox News on April 21, claiming that “the entire Pentagon” is conspiring against Hegseth, in a clip promoted by the Pentagon’s social media team.

Side question: If the “entire Pentagon” is out to get Hegseth, then would the official Pentagon “rapid response” account on X share Leavitt’s conspiracy theory? Like all Team Trump claims, the more you think about them, the less sense they make.

My latest: Supreme Court reminds Trump to follow the law, signaling concern that he won't

Spot the Trumpian tactic? Hegseth made a mistake. So cover that with an absurd exaggeration. And, remember, keep a straight face for the television camera while spouting absurdities.

Leavitt, during her April 22 media briefing, accused the ousted aides of leaking material to reporters, without offering any evidence. 

The aides have flatly denied being leakers and, in a joint April 19 statement, said they’ve been kept in the dark about the status of any investigation into their actions.

Hegseth is sticking to the script, while also offering zero evidence, claiming during an April 22 Fox News interview that his former aides were “leakers” who will be investigated.

Again, left unsaid, Hegseth put them there before moving them out. And all this talk of investigations smacks of just simple intimidation from Team Trump. 

The message there: If you saw us make a mistake, which we never do, you had better keep quiet about it.

Here's what else we're writing about:

Facebook Twitter Email