The Many Embarrassments of Pete Hegseth
The flu vaccine fiasco is the just the latest in a long line of problems created by a man unfit for his job
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Hundreds of young Air Force recruits arrived at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland this spring expecting to begin military training. Instead, at least 275 of them spent their first weeks in uniform confined to their bunks, fighting high fevers and influenza. Some were hospitalized. Training was disrupted. And after the whole base was threatened with a mission-crippling outbreak, the Pentagon eventually reinstated the flu vaccine requirement it had abandoned only weeks earlier.
By now, Americans should recognize the pattern. And the culprit. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth makes a decision designed to generate headlines, provoke applause, or advance a culture-war narrative. Experts warn about the consequences. The warnings are ignored. Then reality hits and everyone in the administration acts shocked.
This week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced out General Christopher T. Donahue, the highly respected commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa with a reputation for competence that transcends partisan politics. His abrupt departure came after a series of other removals of senior military leaders under Hegseth’s watch, reinforcing concerns that professional expertise is increasingly being displaced by political loyalty and ideological conformity.
When President Trump selected Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, supporters argued that he would shake up a complacent institution. What they got instead was a Secretary of Defense who seems to think the Pentagon is a television studio with a bigger budget.
Consider the latest example. Earlier this year, Hegseth rescinded the military’s longstanding flu vaccine requirement, portraying the move as a victory over unnecessary mandates. The decision fit neatly into a broader political message about personal freedom and resistance to expert authority. It also ignored the realities of military life.
At Lackland, recruits live, train, eat, and sleep in close quarters. Military organizations have understood for generations that infectious disease spreads rapidly in such environments. That is one reason vaccination programs became standard practice in the first place. After the requirement was removed, vaccination rates reportedly fell sharply. Then hundreds of recruits got sick.
None of this was a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
Unfortunately, this is just one of many examples. Last year, senior administration officials discussed military operations in Yemen on a Signal group chat that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Goldberg said he received detailed information regarding the strikes before they occurred. It was the sort of mistake that should have ended Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon and sent him back to Fox News.
At first glance, the Signal fiasco, the leadership purge, and the flu outbreak seem unrelated. Yet all three point toward the same underlying problem. In each case, expertise was treated as an obstacle rather than an asset. Procedures existed for a reason. Experienced professionals understood the risks. Leadership either ignored those warnings or viewed them as evidence that the system needed disruption. Then predictable consequences followed.
During my years in the Air Force, I learned a simple lesson: readiness is the mission. The military is not a vehicle for settling cultural grievances. Its purpose is to prepare men and women to fight and win wars.
Television rewards confidence. Politics rewards confrontation. Social media rewards outrage. Military leadership rewards attention to detail, preparation, and respect for consequences. Those are not the same skill sets. After all, we’re talking about a man who once declared on national television that “germs are not a real thing.” Even if that was a joke, it’s hard to ignore the irony of a Defense Secretary who made such a declaration presiding over a preventable flu outbreak.
Throughout his tenure at the Pentagon, Hegseth has displayed a recurring tendency to dismiss expertise, ridicule established practices, and assume that confidence can substitute for competence. The flu outbreak didn’t expose a new problem. It exposed an old one.
At some point, we need to stop treating these episodes as isolated mistakes. When every few weeks produces another preventable controversy, another self-inflicted embarrassment, or another avoidable failure, the issue is no longer the individual mistake. The issue is the person making them.
Running the Pentagon is not like hosting a weekend cable news show. The Secretary of Defense is not supposed to be a military influencer. His job is not to produce headlines, make viral soundbites, or transform every decision into a cultural statement. His job is to ensure that the U.S military remains prepared to fight and win. Hegseth has demonstrated time and again that he does not understand the difference.
He was hired to lead the most powerful military in the world. Instead, he has spent much of his tenure generating controversies that would be laughable if the stakes were not so high.
America’s military faces enough genuine threats without creating new ones for itself. Yet again and again, Pete Hegseth has managed to turn the Pentagon into a source of self-inflicted wounds. Week in and week out, the controversies change, but the pattern remains the same.
If it isn’t obvious by now, the problem is no longer any individual fiasco. The problem is the man who keeps creating them.
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