Date: 2025-07-04 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028490
US ADMINISTRATION
TRUMP'S DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT
Huffpost: The Defense Department is in 'total disarray' under Hegseth.
TRUMP'S DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT
Huffpost: The Defense Department is in 'total disarray' under Hegseth.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House
in Washington, on April 10, 2025. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Original article: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-ullyot-pete-hegseth-warning_n_6805b753e4b079fefa2798de?dicbo=v2-Uh2Ygv8
Original article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/20/pentagon-chaos-ullyot-hegseth-00205594
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
In my opinion, Trump is a nasty human being. He has been all his life ... and it just gets worse with time.
It is a problem that, as President of the United States, he has access to enormous power and influence and the support of millions. Worse, he has been able to 'con' these millions into what is rather like a 'cult' in support of his (that is Trump's) every move.
Some of these people are 'evil' at their core ... but most are merely dumb and misinformed. They have been 'conned' into thinking that Trump is a 'good guy' and will make their lives better. Bluntly put, they have bought into an 'alternative reality' ... a fiction that Trump has created out of thin air ... something that has no foundation whatsoever in even the flimsiest of reality.
The election of Donald Trump to be President of the United States ... not once, but twice ... is not explained solely by the support he gets from the 'common man'. That is an important part, but there are other factors.
Many of the 'rich and powerful' are strongly opposed to a 'Liberal' political agenda or any agenda that attempts to be as fair as possible to everyone in the country. Many of the rich and powerful are not highly visible 'supporters' of the Trump MAGA agenda, but are certainly not in support of a 'Liberal agenda' and are jighly unlikely to vote for Democrats.
This group is quite large and relatively quiet ... but well funded. They are the source of most of the 'money in politics' and most of this money gets used in support of the Trump MAGA agenda ... which is essentially an egenda in support of the rich getting richer.
My analysis and commentary about the economy goes back a long time. My interest in the subject developed when I was a student at Cambridge in the late 1950s ... about 65 years ago! Initially, I completed the course work for a Cambridge engineering degree. Rather than going on to post-graduate work in engineering, I chose to learn something about economics and ended up taking the final exams of the complete 3 year economics Tripos! My student level education was way broader than most and also at a reasonabley high academic level! Fast forward, I joined a major UK engineering company and participated in their 'management training'. More than anything else I learned something about the differences and disconnects between industry and academia. The CFO of this engineering company ... a Chartered Accountant himself ... recommended that I get qualified as a Chartered Accountant by going through the 'Articles' process. I interviewed with several of Britain's major accountancy firms in London including Peat Marwick, Mitchell, Price Waterhouse, and Cooper Brothers ... three firms with very different core characteristics. CB&Co seemed like the most forward thinking and most international and I chose to join them as an 'Articled Clerk'. Three years later I was qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ACA) and another five years later this was upgracded to FCA around the same time that my Cambridge BA was upgraded to MA.
Probably, most important however, was the experience I was afforded during my training and early career with Cooper Brothers.
INCOMPLETE ... MORE TO COME
Peter Burgess
John Ullyot said the Defense Department is in 'total disarray' under Hegseth.
Written by Ed Mazza
Apr 21, 2025, 12:07 AM EDT
John Ullyot, who resigned last week as chief Pentagon spokesperson, predicted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will also be out of a job soon.
And he warned that even more “bombshell” stories about Hegseth and the Defense Department are about to drop.
“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” Ullyot, who has served in a number of roles within President Donald Trump’s orbit over the years, wrote in an opinion piece for Politico. “From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”
Hegseth has been under fire after a series of reports that he repeatedly shared highly sensitive information outside official channels, especially via the Signal messaging app.
Last month, it was revealed that national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal group chat with other top officials, including Hegseth, who shared details about military strikes in Yemen, among other things.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Hegseth had a second, more personal Signal chat in which he shared sensitive information with his wife, brother and others.
He also reportedly allowed his wife to sit in on sensitive meetings with foreign officials, and reportedly intended to brief Elon Musk on military plans should a war break out with China. Trump canceled the briefing when he found out.
Also in recent days, three senior leaders were forced out at the Defense Department amid an investigation into leaks.
Ullyot called it a “strange and baffling purge” that has led to “a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks.”
“The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” Ullyot wrote, calling the past weeks “total chaos” and the “month from hell.” He called himself a “strong backer” of Hegseth, but said the Pentagon is in a “full-blown meltdown.”
“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account,” he wrote. “Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”
And he warned there’s more to come.
“There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week, key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately,” he wrote.
Original article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/20/pentagon-chaos-ullyot-hegseth-00205594
POLITICO: War Room ... Opinion | Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson Details ‘Month From Hell’ Inside the Agency
The total chaos at the Department of Defense is becoming a major distraction for the Trump administration, writes John Ullyot.
Opinion written by John Ullyot
John Ullyot is former chief Pentagon spokesman and led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs in President Donald Trump’s first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.
04/20/2025 07:15 PM EDT
It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.
President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.
The latest flashpoint is a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks. On Friday, Hegseth fired three of his most loyal senior staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Defense. In the aftermath, Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month.
Yet none of this is true. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.
On Friday, POLITICO reported that Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was leaving his role. Kasper had requested the investigation into the Pentagon leaks, which reportedly included military operational plans for the Panama Canal and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.
Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge that will leave him without his two closest advisers of over a decade — Caldwell and Selnick — and without chiefs of staff for him and his deputy. More firings may be coming, according to rumors in the building.
In short, the building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.
Fortunately, I was not a victim of this purge of his senior leadership. Like Caldwell and Selnick, I am a longtime backer of the secretary. In December, when his Senate confirmation was in jeopardy, I wrote an opinion piece arguing strongly that he was the best man to shake things up at a Pentagon in need of serious reform.
A month later, Hegseth invited me to stand up and lead the Pentagon public affairs operation for his initial time in the building, and then possibly take on another position in the department after that.
We accomplished a lot together, including bringing new, largely more conservative, media outlets into the Pentagon press space, and ensuring the public understands Trump’s commitment to rebuilding our military after four years of drift under President Joe Biden and his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, including their injecting divisive identity politics and lowering high standards on body composition and physical fitness in the uniformed services.
Last week, a month after leaving my public affairs role, I respectfully declined the secretary’s generous offer for a new position and informed him of my decision to leave the department, wishing him all the best. I value his friendship and am grateful for his giving me the opportunity to serve. I salute his leadership in helping the president make America strong again.
Yet even strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.
First there was Signalgate, where the secretary shared detailed operational plans, including timelines and specifics, about an impending military strike on the Houthis in Yemen over an unclassified Signal chat group that happened to include a member of the news media.
Once the Signalgate story broke, Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that “nobody was texting war plans.” This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.
His nebulous disavowal prompted the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, to release Hegseth’s full chat string with the detailed operational plans two days later, turning an already-big story into a multi-week embarrassment for the president’s national security team. Hegseth now faces an inspector general investigation into a possible leak of classified information and violation of records retention protocols.
That was just the beginning of the Month from Hell. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that Hegseth “brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed.”
Next, the Pentagon set up a top-secret briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on China for Elon Musk, who still has extensive business interests in China. After learning about it, the White House canceled that meeting.
Then came the purges. And the news keeps coming. On Sunday night, The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details about the Yemen strike in another Signal chat that included his wife and brother.
There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week, key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately.
One reason the American people gave Trump a conclusive victory last November is that he’s not a go-along, get-along creature of the Beltway like many of his recent predecessors, but rather a shrewd businessman who expects results and holds his team accountable for serious mistakes that occur on their watch. Just ask Cabinet Secretaries Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, Rex Tillerson, David Shulkin, Tom Price and Ryan Zinke. They, like Hegseth, are all good men and patriots whom Trump dismissed in his first term when he found their performance wanting.
Biden did the opposite. From his Defense secretary’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and disappearing for six days telling neither his staff nor the White House, to his Transportation secretary’s weeks-long refusal to visit the site of a major railroad derailment and catastrophic chemical spill, to his secretary of State’s allowing Chinese officials to lecture him about race relations, Biden held not a single one on his team accountable and just let them skate.
In Trump’s first term, he produced more national-security wins than any president in a generation or more. Trump countered Communist China’s aggression, strengthened our Indo-Pacific partnerships, began America’s long-awaited departure from Afghanistan, eliminated the ISIS caliphate, and killed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, among other big wins.
In the first three months of his second term, Trump has continued that great record on national security, in particular refocusing the Defense Department on its core mission of preparing to fight and win wars. Unfortunately, after a terrible month, the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama.
The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon. Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department.
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