Everyone Got Pete Hegseth Wrong

Everyone Got Pete Hegseth Wrong

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Argument: Everyone Got Pete Hegseth Wrong

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Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

Everyone Got Pete Hegseth Wrong

The secretary of defense is now the most influential senior official in the Trump administration.

!Ashford-Emma-foreign-policy-columnist

*Ashford-Emma-foreign-policy-columnist*

*Emma Ashford*

By **Emma Ashford**, a columnist at *Foreign Policy* and senior fellow with the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program.

!U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine depart following the Department of War's 2026 National POW/MIA Recognition Day Ceremony on the Pentagon River Terrace Parade Field in Arlington, Virginia, on Sept. 18.

*U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine depart following the Department of War's 2026 National POW/MIA Recognition Day Ceremony on the Pentagon River Terrace Parade Field in Arlington, Virginia, on Sept. 18.*

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine depart following the Department of War's 2026 National POW/MIA Recognition Day Ceremony on the Pentagon River Terrace Parade Field in Arlington, Virginia, on Sept. 18. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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September 30, 2026, 7:09 AM

While I’ve done a decent job of predicting the overall arc of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, I’ve also gotten some things profoundly wrong. For example, I—like many in Washington—thought we were headed into a new period of tension and competition with China. Worse, I told a journalist last year that I didn’t think Trump wanted a war with Iran, a mistake that has prompted me to reconsider not just Trump’s approach to Iran, but my understanding of his decision-making process writ large.

Mea culpa.

While I’ve done a decent job of predicting the overall arc of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, I’ve also gotten some things profoundly wrong. For example, I—like many in Washington—thought we were headed into a new period of tension and competition with China. Worse, I told a journalist last year that I didn’t think Trump wanted a war with Iran, a mistake that has prompted me to reconsider not just Trump’s approach to Iran, but my understanding of his decision-making process writ large.

Mea culpa.

But in thinking through predictions about the second Trump administration, I’m struck that practically everybody got Pete Hegseth wrong. Is there a single person who predicted that the secretary of defense would become one of the most influential—potentially even the most effective—senior officials within the Trump administration? I can’t find one, and that’s astounding. In May, the *Washington Post* described Hegseth as an “emboldened, ascendant figure” within the Trump administration, while more recently the *Bloomberg* editorial board penned a piece on his “generational damage” to the U.S. military. And today, Hegseth’s State of the Force speech will offer him another opportunity to highlight the drastic changes he has made in how the American military approaches recruiting, training, and even combat.

---

Back when Trump first proposed Hegseth as his defense secretary, it prompted a wave of incredulity in the press and in Washington. Sure, Hegseth had a military background—but only as a junior officer. He’d never worked at the Pentagon. Indeed, it was very clear that his primary qualification for the job, at least in Trump’s eyes, was his extended stint as a host of *Fox and Friends*. His chiseled good looks and snappy suits, straight out of “central casting,” probably didn’t hurt, either.

His confirmation hearings did little to dispel the notion that Hegseth was at best incompetent. It emerged he had been fired from two different veterans’ advocacy organizations over financial mismanagement, drunkenness, and womanizing; there were allegations of worse behavior. Even his foreign-policy views were concerning, to say the least. Hegseth may have portrayed himself as a “recovering neocon” whose war-on-terror experiences purportedly left him wiser, but he also railed against “defeatist” Democrats as well as spent years campaigning for Eddie Gallagher, a veteran who was accused of multiple offenses by his members of his own platoon and acquitted of the most serious charges at his 2019 court martial.

Despite all of this, Hegseth was narrowly confirmed by Congress; many assumed he’d simply be an empty suit. And the early months of his tenure did little to disabuse people of this notion. Among his early priorities were installing a makeup studio near the press briefing room in the Pentagon, posting social media videos about new drone acquisitions, and forcing senior officers to fly halfway around the world to listen to him lecture them about physical fitness standards.

He also seemed to struggle with management. Hegseth fired several senior defense officials, accusing them of leaking sensitive information; those officials were later exonerated by an investigation. He lashed out at journalists who reported embarrassing facts about his leadership, leading one publication to describe the Pentagon, memorably, as the “Department of Defensiveness.” And perhaps most infamously, the secretary was a core participant in the Signalgate scandal, where he shared classified information about an ongoing military campaign via the messaging app.

But over t