Military leaders 'trying to send a signal to' Trump over 'vulnerable' defense sec: insider

Podcast host and former Jeb Bush campaign communications director Tim Miller says Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now running the risk of getting “Brutused,” Roman style, by people inside his own Pentagon and from inside his own right-wing movement.

Referring to a recent story in the conservative Washington Times claiming Hegseth has “lost trust” with “senior military commanders” and trust has “evaporated,” Miller argued that the threat to the secretary’s career is elevated now that stories are showing up in conservative outlets.

“This coming out of the Washington Times is something that makes Pete Hegseth more vulnerable than if it would have come from a mainstream outlet,” Miller told MSNBC. “We're in this weird upside-down place, kind of like that movie “Men in Black,” where you have to read the National Enquirer to get the real news about the aliens. We're kind of there now. You have to read the far-right MAGA news to know what people are really thinking inside the White House in a lot of cases. … These are probably people inside the military, who are maybe even sympathetic to [President Donald] Trump but want just more competent leadership, and they’re trying to send a signal to him and a message to him.”

Trump largely ignores legitimate media and focuses on under-researched, highly opinionated right-wing outlets. When these news sources produce stories of Hegseth's fixation on facial hair and limiting press access Miller said it is intended to target the president.

“I think it's a really vulnerable moment for Hegseth right now,” said Miller. “You know, on the one hand, there was [the Signal chat] firestorm around him initially that I think he survived because he basically made the case to the president that ‘they're coming after me like they're coming after you, and we're going to go after the fake news.’ [But] now these complaints are not really coming from somebody they can turn into a boogeyman. This is coming from military leaders. This is coming from a right-wing media outlet.”

This time, he said, the tactic could work.

“At some point, all of that bad press starts to pile up and Trump doesn't like it. And we've seen this time and again going back to the first term where, you know, he wants to defend his people for a little while against the media. But after a while, you know, it's all about him.”

Miller said lawmakers are also losing patience with Hegseth’s obsession with controlling information, even to the point of keeping them from it.

“The members of … both the House and the Senate, who are veterans, who are on the Armed Services Committee members, they expect to have access to the military. They've been around for a while, a lot of them. They have had that access. And the idea that Pete Hegseth — a former weekend talk show co-host — is going to take it away from them is something that bristles. And then on the crackdown of the media … it is truly a banana republic situation over at the Pentagon at this point,” Miller said. “If you look down the list of the media [Hegseth is allowing], it is it is no different than Sputnik or the types of media outlets that would cover the Russian president. It is mostly foreign outlets of countries run by authoritarians like Turkish media outlets, etc., and sites that are so far right that … even Fox and Washington Times look askance.”