Olson: Pete Hegseth has no business at the Pentagon

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Why is Pete Hegseth still secretary of defense?

The Minnesota native has shown himself breathtakingly unprepared to lead, unwilling to admit mistakes and adamant that no course correction is needed. The political divide in this country is great, but on this we can agree: The lives of our troops abroad matter more than partisan differences at home.

Hegseth has failed to meet President Donald Trump’s confidence in him with even a modicum of competence. Setting aside, for now, the reports of discord at the Pentagon under his brief tenure, what cannot be overlooked for another moment is Hegseth’s casual, careless handling of sensitive military information. The more we learn, the more there is to fear.

NBC News reported that minutes before the attack on Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen last month, U.S. Central Command leader Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla used a secure government system to send detailed operational information to Hegseth about when the jets would launch and reach their targets.

Within 10 minutes, Hegseth used his personal phone to share the troop movements with a Signal chat group involving 13 people, including his wife, brother and personal attorney, according to the NBC report.

That was the second such incident of Hegseth’s involvement in a Signal group chat during which highly sensitive troop movements were discussed. A month ago, the Atlantic magazine revealed that Hegseth was a participant in a group chat that inadvertently included the publication’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg. The discussions Goldberg saw took place two hours before U.S. troops struck the Houthis.

The breaches are mind-blowing both for the inclusion of government outsiders and the unsecured delivery method involving the defense secretary’s personal phone. The lapses apparently did nothing to shake Trump’s inscrutable support of Hegseth, whose problematic leadership and management practices were well documented before his confirmation.

Hegseth, a 44-year-old former Fox News host and Forest Lake native, is a commissioned infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard with combat experience and two Bronze Stars.

Although he lacked the leadership experience and qualifications of others who have held the top job at the Defense Department, Trump wanted him and muscled his confirmation through the Senate with Vice President JD Vance as the tiebreaking vote.

On Sunday, the White House chalked up the latest reports about Hegseth’s security breaches to disgruntled former employees spreading false information. At the White House Easter event, with his young children by his side, Hegseth was similarly dismissive and unwilling to acknowledge his error.

The silence of Republicans was breached Monday, however, when Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon became the first House Republican to suggest that Hegseth should be removed.

“The military should always pride itself on operational security. If the reports are true, the secretary of defense has failed at operational security, and that is unacceptable,” Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Axios. While he stopped short of calling for Hegseth’s resignation, he was candid about the partisan divide. “If a Democrat did this, we’d be demanding a scalp,” Bacon said. “I don’t like hypocrisy. We should be Americans first when it comes to security.”

Late Monday, Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat who represents the St. Paul-centered Fourth Congressional District, called for Hegseth’s resignation. McCollum said Hegseth has proven to be “completely incompetent.”

The mishandling of sensitive information by a defense secretary is “completely unprecedented, unbecoming of the office, and dangerous. If anyone else in the military did what Secretary Hegseth did, they would be fired immediately, could be dishonorably discharged, and certainly would lose their security clearance,” McCollum wrote.

Bacon and McCollum are both right.

Our troops are in peril and so we ask again for an answer to the terrifying question:

Why is Pete Hegseth still secretary of defense?