US Defence Secretary Hegseth Keeps Trump's Favor For Now Despite String of Missteps

In the high-frequency churn of President Donald Trump's first term, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's repeated missteps would have fuelled guessing games about his imminent firing. In the second, he has maintained White House support – at least for now.

On Thursday, a Pentagon inspector general found that Hegseth risked endangering US pilots, troops and attack plans with his decision to send sensitive information in Signal texts. Days earlier, he was on the defensive over his handling of an attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea that raised accusations of war crimes.

They were the latest in a string of mishaps and controversies that have pushed Hegseth into the spotlight since well before he even won confirmation running the Department of Defence. 

Yet Trump has so far stood by the 45-year-old former infantry officer and Fox News host, publicly voicing his support.

Hegseth was seated right next to Trump at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, a clear sign of support even before the president said, "Pete's doing a great job." In April, after the initial reports of the Signal chats first emerged, Trump said: "Everybody is happy with him."

And last year, when Hegseth's nomination appeared in jeopardy over a series of allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual assault, Trump wrote that "Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that." Hegseth denied the allegations, which he said were part of a smear campaign, while acknowledging, "I'm not a perfect person."

Hegseth's staying power breaks with the precedent of Trump's first term in office, when he went through two confirmed defense secretaries and two acting ones, along with his four national security advisers and four chiefs of staff. 

But it's very much in keeping with the second term, where Trump has mostly resisted firing his staff - with "Signalgate" merely resulting in his national security advisor Mike Waltz being shuffled to a new role at the United Nations. 

Rather than surrounding himself with highly experienced executives and former officers, the emphasis this time has been more on loyalty and staff who, in the words of his son Donald Trump Jr., "don't think they know better."

With Hegseth, "there are White House people who don't like him but it's really Trump himself who likes his attitude," former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican, said in an interview. "The more obnoxious he is, the more Trump-like he is - that's what Trump likes."

It's all reminiscent of Trump's tactics almost exactly a year ago, even before his inauguration, when the administration stuck by Hegseth and pushed his nomination through Congress despite the assault and alcohol abuse claims.

At the time, Republicans close to Trump suggested there was a strategy behind that decision. Hegseth's nomination, they said, was a test case to see how much Trump could bend Congressional Republicans to his will. Hegseth had few obvious qualifications for the job and faced deep skepticism from Republicans in Congress. 

In the end, Hegseth won confirmation by a single tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance. And indeed, it served as a harbinger to Trump's expansion of executive branch authority with a virtual rubber stamp from the GOP. Meanwhile, Hegseth cemented his status in the administration as one of Trump's most vocal and aggressive champions. Rather than back down, he's delighted in trolling Democrats and taken up with fervor the MAGA penchant for meme-based online mockery. 

He leaned harder into the military campaign in the Caribbean Sea, posting an image that showed the children's book character Franklin the turtle blasting a boat with a rocket-propelled grenade. "For your Christmas wish list," Hegseth wrote. He denied the Pentagon had done anything wrong with the boat strikes.

"As I've said, and I'll say it again, we've only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they've been poisoning the American people," Hegseth said at Trump's most recent Cabinet meeting.

We are bringing Christmas back to the Pentagon. pic.twitter.com/SRrRKFeHiE

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) December 4, 2025

Hegseth directed Pentagon resources to Trump's anti-immigration agenda, pushed to eradicate DEI and other so-called "woke" initiatives and, early in the administration, embraced Elon Musk's DOGE push. He kicked reporters out of their Pentagon offices and on Thursday oversaw a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony at the Pentagon, with a tribute to Trump thrown in. 

"A couple of months ago, my wife said, 'Babe, President Trump brought Merry Christmas back, we're going to bring Christmas back to the Pentagon,'" he said in a social media video about the event.

And Hegseth does retain plenty of support from many of Trump's allies. Senator Eric Schmitt, the Missouri Republican, called the Pentagon inspector general's report about Hegseth's Signal use a "nothing burger" and part of a "neverending stream of efforts to undermine Pete Hegseth," according to the Wall Street Journal. "I think he's doing a great job, and it is what it is," Schmitt said.

The question now is how long that will last. A recent Fox News poll put Trump's approval rating at 41 per cent, a sharp dip from two months ago and near the all-time low for Trump of 38 per cent from his first term. And some of those who supported Hegseth then, such as Senator Thom Tillis, have expressed reservations now.

"I'm sure the Democrats are fine letting Hegseth twist in the wind, and every day you drag him up there, every problem he has only exacerbates all the other problems," Comstock said. "That's a lot of capital you're expending in an area you're already underwater."