Hegseth chose loyalty over leadership — and has crippled the military

Forget all that shiit, have you guys seen his workout videos?

Imagine being that jacked?

Elections have consequences.

Our first ever, "Secretary of War," just happens to be an unqualified, petty, content creating, biotch.

McLovin32 said:

Elections have consequences.

Our first ever, "Secretary of War," just happens to be an unqualified petty, content creating, biotch.

Click to expand...

The President craves those traits.

Complete nonsense. Recruitment is through the roof with new records set under hegseth. He helped oversee the most impressive military operation in the last decade as least eith the maduro capture in venezuela and he has overseen the complete decimation of the globe's largest sponsor of terror. He also purged the military of the mentally unfit trans folx.

Hegseth has done an amazing job.

Anon1750875978 said:

Forget all that shiit, have you guys seen his workout videos?

Imagine being that jacked?

Click to expand...

High T is of most importance!

I mean, if I had to choose between competance and bench reps...I'm taking bench reps ALL.DAY.LONG!

These are the people they're catering to.

The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and corroborating material.

At least some of the influencers have been assigned to civilian roles that could lead to changes in policy, the people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Neither the Pentagon nor those involved have disclosed the government roles despite the Trump administration’s claims that they are running the most transparent Defense Department ever.

Those involved include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, people familiar with the matter said. Pentagon records reviewed by The Washington Post show that both have active official government email addresses as of this past week and are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The email addresses include a “.civ” suffix, meaning they are labeled as civilian employees, rather than as military personnel or contractors.

Both served for decades in uniform and, since retiring, have turned from the military to conservative commentary. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, while Schlichter has nearly 620,000.

Another retired Army colonel and influencer, Thomas Anderson, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year with a “.civ” email address and assigned to Tata’s office, according to people familiar with the matter and records reviewed by The Post. An attorney, he writes online under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers on X. He was no longer listed in Pentagon records late this past week, the people familiar with the issue said.

The assignments for all three have not previously been reported. Questions have been raised online about influencers’ connections with the Pentagon, including in an article last week by the Bulwark.

Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez declined to comment to The Post about whether any of the three are drawing a taxpayer-funded salary, what roles they have or how long those jobs are expected to last. Tata did not respond to a request for comment.
Maness and Schlichter did not respond to emails or other messages requesting comment. Anderson declined to comment in a short phone call.


Rob Maness as a colonel in the Air Force. He retired in 2011. (U.S. Air Force)


The individuals are assigned as either “special government employees” or “highly qualified experts,” people familiar with the issue said. Schlichter appears in a government database with an “HQE” designation after his name, according to material reviewed by The Post.

SGEs are limited by law to working no more than 130 days in any 365-day period. Those with HQE status can work full- or part-time, with or without compensation, according to government guidance on the issue released in 2023. It was not clear what financial agreements were reached with Maness, Schlichter and Anderson, and when each of their assignments began.


Tata’s team has taken on a number of culture-war issues, including scrutinizing war colleges for “woke” ideology and reviewing how the Biden administration adopted covid vaccine mandates for U.S. troops.

Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and Army National Guard officer, has attempted to reshape the public discourse about Pentagon affairs. Last year, he imposed new restrictions on Pentagon press corps members that forced dozens of journalists out of the building and later introduced a new, primarily right-wing press corps to replace them.

The increased attention on the Pentagon’s influence efforts comes after another conservative influencer, Jennica Pounds, accused a State Department official this month on social media of attempting to entrap her into publishing government secrets. Pounds, writing under the pen name DataRepublican, posted text messages online that showed the official approached Pounds with documents to publish and tout as a journalistic scoop.

Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, later disclosed on social media that she was the official who had reached out to Pounds. Rogers posted the documents herself, saying it was not a “trap,” and Pounds later said that she regretted “making a public spectacle” and “pulling people I respect into the swirl.” Rogers has been nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America and other government-funded media.

The dustup was followed by the Pentagon and Pounds disclosing that she works as a special government employee for the Defense Department. She posted on social media that she became an employee in July, after holding a credential as a journalist in Hegseth’s new Pentagon press corps until June. Pounds has said on social media that she applied for a Pentagon press pass and received it in April.

Pounds did not respond to a request for comment.

The disclosure has roiled social media, where some fellow influencers have defended Pounds’s work amid criticism that she should have disclosed she was working for the government
.
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and Air Force veteran, posted that it appears the Pentagon “is using your tax dollars to hire influencers on X to put out partisan talking points.”

More...

“How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government, and Donald Trump, and the Republican Party ... are actually special government employees?” said Kinzinger.

Maness, Schlichter and Anderson appeared on behalf of the Pentagon’s Senior Service College Task Force at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in May, two people familiar with the visit said. The task force was organized in the spring with the goal of rooting out ideology deemed “toxic” or “woke,” Hegseth said in March.

The task force has completed its research and prepared a report that has not yet been released, one of the people familiar with the visit said.

While in Carlisle, they met with students and professors over a number of days and asked questions about the performance of leaders like Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the people familiar with the visit said. Some students were uncertain how candid they should be and whether there would be negative consequences if administration officials did not like the answers, this person said.

The other person familiar with the visit said the task force members had concerns about the syllabus for a class focused on how military officers communicate with Congress.

Maness retired from the Air Force in 2011 and has run unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana. He is listed as the chairman of GatorPAC, a political action committee that says on its website that it wants to “drain the swamp” in Washington and find more military veterans to run for office. The PAC’s website also includes videos of an online political commentary show starring Maness.

In an article published last month by the conservative Daily Caller, Maness argues that Hegseth’s team needs to root out “disloyal” career employees in the department and laments “careerists who treat the Pentagon as their permanent fiefdom.” That article cites his decades of military experience, but does not say whether he is a current Pentagon employee.

In an article published Wednesday on the website Campus Reform, Maness attacked a decision made by Army leaders to pull back efforts to toughen academic requirements for college students in Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs. “Secretary Hegseth’s outrage is justified,” Maness wrote. The article likewise does not mention any government assignment.

Maness also had a letter to the editor published in The Post in July in which he defended Hegseth’s efforts to reduce the number of military officers who attend elite universities for fellowships. He describes himself there as a retired Air Force officer, but no government role is mentioned. A Post spokesperson said that Maness did not disclose any connection to the Pentagon before publication.

Schlichter is a columnist with the conservative site Townhall, writing and podcasting on politics, immigration and military affairs. On Aug. 6, he published a column calling Trump a “hero for finally fighting back against Iran.”

“He could have waltzed into the midterms, dragging Republicans behind him toward success,” Schlichter wrote. “But he had the courage to do what was necessary to stop these bastards before they made it impossible to prevent them from getting a [nuclear] bomb.”

On social media, Schlichter posted a video earlier this month of Hegseth praising sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has faced morale problems during a long deployment.

“We are,lucky to have @PeteHegseth,” Schlichter wrote on X on Aug. 14. He describes himself on X as a retired Army colonel, lawyer and columnist, but does not disclose current Pentagon employment.

On social media, Anderson has been a frequent critic of journalists, fellow veterans and others opposing the Trump administration and has defended Hegseth’s efforts to overhaul military affairs. Writing for the Federalist in April, he assessed that there is “a cancer in America’s military ranks, and it must be expunged before it’s too late.”

This past week, he repeatedly defended Pounds on X for serving as a special government employee as he also declined to answer questions from several people about whether he was an SGE employee, too.

“The law does not view such people the same as civil servants, and they are legally allowed to continue whatever other private endeavors they were undertaking,” Anderson wrote. “In many cases, they are prohibited from revealing their status because of the sensitive nature of their work.”

Another military influencer, John Konrad, also defended Pounds while noting he had discussions with the administration this spring about becoming a special government employee at the Pentagon. Konrad, a former member of the U.S. Merchant Marine and founder of the maritime website gCaptain, said that the Pentagon sought him out for a role and he later felt “ghosted.”

The Pentagon also brought on Jerry Dunleavy, a journalist with the conservative Just the News, to assist Hegseth’s team with an ongoing review of the fall of Afghanistan. The Pentagon disclosed Dunleavy’s involvement in May.

Dunleavy previously worked as an investigator for the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee during an earlier investigation of the collapse in Kabul and quit in protest, saying the committee had not gone far enough.

River2
Now they're politicizing the civil service. They are turning it into the fascist service.

KennyD331
Dept of War apparently means culture war with its own citizens.

EllbeeH
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what their roles are. They’re influencers. Influencers push products or ideas of others to make money. This is propaganda pure and simple.

Cynthia Colleen Ross
Another day, another incredible abuse of trump administration powers.

Ken Ols
Where is the oversight by the Armed Services Committees ???

WH worrying about social media...can't make this shiit up.

I bet Hegseth smells like a fart

Scrubby said:

Complete nonsense. Recruitment is through the roof with new records set under hegseth. He helped oversee the most impressive military operation in the last decade as least eith the maduro capture in venezuela and he has overseen the complete decimation of the globe's largest sponsor of terror. He also purged the military of the mentally unfit trans folx.

Hegseth has done an amazing job.

Click to expand...

AND don't forget Hegseth's method of getting information out there by inviting a reporter into a classified group chat. Solid work there.

cigaretteman said:

It was obvious from the start that appointing Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News weekend host — as secretary of defense was a spectacularly bad idea: He was, by far, the least qualified person ever to lead the Pentagon. So, too, was it obvious that Hegseth’s decision to fire more than two dozen senior officers and to block the promotions of at least 45 officers — for reasons he never explained — was a spectacularly bad idea that would deny the armed forces the veteran, apolitical leadership they need.


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What was not so apparent, until now, was the consequences of those decisions. They have created a dangerous leadership vacuum that is jeopardizing national security and military readiness. Critical posts in the armed forces are either not being filled or are being filled with officers seemingly appointed more for political than professional reasons.



The most alarming evidence is the Iran fiasco. Now six months old, President Donald Trump’s military campaign has failed to end either Iran’s regime or its nuclear program, but it has taken a heavy toll on the world situation and on the U.S. armed forces. Recent Washington Post headlines tell the story: “Putin sees U.S. as weakened by Iran war, intelligence reports say.” “U.S. weapons shortage from Iran war alarms allies confronting China.” “Democrats seek answers after reports of poor conditions on USS Abraham Lincoln.”
Trump, of course, bears ultimate responsibility for launching this unsuccessful and unnecessary conflict. Yet the Pentagon leadership can’t escape blame. A Wall Street Journal investigation published last week found that the intelligence community accurately warned of the risks and Vice President JD Vance counseled against the conflict. But Trump was apparently won over by Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine and Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, who briefed him on plans to cripple Iranian forces. According to the Journal, Hegseth and Caine assured the president “they would navigate any complications.”

I am dead certain that if Jim Mattis, one of Trump’s first-term secretaries of defense, and Gen. Mark Milley, his first-term chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were still in office, we would never have gotten into this quagmire. Both men actively and wisely resisted pressure to attack Iran.


But in his second term, Trump made sure to appoint more pliant leaders. He fired the previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs and appointed Caine, a retired three-star, because he had the (probably wrong) impression that Caine was a MAGA supporter. Hegseth chose Cooper to run Centcom over the front-runner — Army Gen. James Mingus — apparently because Mingus had worked for Milley, whom Trump loathes.
Hegseth subsequently fired Mingus as Army vice chief of staff and then got rid of his widely respected boss— Gen. Randy George. The Army now has no confirmed chief of staff. The post is filled on an acting basis by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, Hegseth’s former military assistant who won Trump’s favor by calling in to congratulate him on his inauguration. Bipartisan concerns in the Senate are blocking LaNeve’s confirmation to the top job.

The Post just reported that, before George was fired, LaNeve had warned him not to investigate the helicopter pilots who recklessly hovered in front of Trump supporter Kid Rock’s house. Then, one of LaNeve’s first actions as acting chief was to disband a drone battalion that George had organized — a move that former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R) called a “terrible mistake.”


Another terrible mistake was LaNeve’s decision to reassign III Armored Corps — which comprises three heavy divisions — from focusing on the Russian threat in Europe to the new Western Hemisphere Command. Are these armored units supposed to invade Mexico? Greenland? Canada? It makes no sense and sends a dangerous signal of irresolution to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Hegseth’s purges have created a vacuum in Army leadership. As the New York Times notes, the Army has gone from having 10 four-star generals to having only five. Some key jobs have been empty for months. And the vacuum at the top will only get worse because Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who worked closely with George but clashed with Hegseth, is reportedly leaving.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...enter-republicans-difficult-midterm-campaign/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/31/hegseths-purges-pentagon-leaders-threaten-national-security/

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when did Milley face pressure to attack Iran? Certainly not from appeasement Joe.

McLovin32 said:

Elections have consequences.

Our first ever, "Secretary of War," just happens to be an unqualified, petty, content creating, biotch.

Click to expand...

If only he were a woke munitions industry rep like Austin (except when he vanished).

hopefultiger13 said:

AND don't forget Hegseth's method of getting information out there by inviting a reporter into a classified group chat. Solid work there.

Click to expand...

Hegseth didn’t invite a reporter into a signal chat lol

talk about improvements though, the last dunce at the DoD under sleepy joe literally went AWOL