When President Donald Trump chose Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary, incoming officials knew they’d need to surround the inexperienced Fox News host with accomplished staff who could handle the nation’s largest bureaucracy.

John Ullyot, a former Pentagon spokesperson under Hegseth and a White House official during Trump’s first term, wrote that “the last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration”, in a stinging op-ed in Politico this week.

Brian Kilmeade, one of the co-hosts of Fox & Friends, got things started during the interview by accidentally referring to Hegseth as the “former” defense secretary before correcting himself. Kilmeade asked Hegseth about “his thoughts” on new reporting from the New York Times that he had a second Signal chat where he discussed highly sensitive military information with about a dozen people like his wife,