Ex-staffer exposes 'sinister secrets' at Trump's Pentagon

Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., November 14, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

The man once charged with establishing communications operations at the Pentagon at the start of President Donald Trump's second term is speaking out about the "disturbing" things he witnessed, revealing the department's "sinister secrets" in a new interview with The Daily Beast.

John Ullyot previously worked as a deputy assistant to Trump during the back half of his first term, and returned for his second term as a spokesman for the Department of Defense. During the latter stint in the administration, he was tasked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with helping establish a new communications office. He was asked to resign just three months into the job, however, for reasons that were unclear at the time.

He is now promoting a new tell-all book, The President Deserves Better, revealing the alarming details about the things he witnessed in the second Trump administration, and why he believes Hegseth and the department he commands are damaging the GOP's image. On Sunday, he was a guest on The Daily Beast Podcast, where he shared some of the details about what he witnessed from Hegseth with host Joanna Coles.

This included the fact that Hegseth flouted the "customary" tradition of meeting with senators from both parties on the Senate Armed Services Committee during the confirmation process, instead opting only to meet with Republicans. He also, notably, brought his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, along to each of the meetings. He also detailed "a full-on, kind of hostile or skeptical job interview of sorts" he had with Jennifer Hegseth ahead of his job setting up the communications office, including many pointed questions about how we would handle "hostile press." Coles also noted that it would have been more difficult for senators to grill Hegseth about his history of infidelity and allegations of sexual assault with his wife in the room.

Ullyot offered three reasons why he believes Hegseth might have decided to involve his wife so thoroughly in his job, including a sense that she was actively "stage managing" him.

"One, and I think that this goes to a lot of his problems even now, but certainly in the first couple of months that I was there, and then really in his first nine months," Ullyot said. He's demonstrated that he has no idea how things work. He's never been in government other than being an officer in the Minnesota National Guard. So he didn't know that it was improper to bring his wife around... I don't know if they told him it was inappropriate, but he must have insisted because she was there, so I don't know. So I think he didn't realize how bad look that was."

He continued: "Number two, I think it is, to your point, it does sort of push back on the sexual impropriety. The fact that he's been kind of running around with different women, reportedly, that was something that says, 'Hey, I've got my wife here. She wouldn't be with me if she didn't have confidence and that I'm a different man,' et cetera. And then the third is that she just takes a very hands-on approach with him because she, of course, was his producer at Fox News...She's very involved because she was his producer, sort of, stage-managing him. And I saw that directly when I went into the Pentagon, and it's just going to work since then."

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