President Donald Trump has publicly maintained support for his embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire said he's "starting to cool" on him.
The Signalgate scandal continues to resonate because it's fairly easy to understand and even Republicans have criticized his use of a non-secure app to discuss military operations, Lemire said. "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough added that some Trump allies have been aggravated by Hegseth since he was first nominated.
"Those are headaches that the White House and the people that are working around president Trump just don't need," Scarborough said, "and they seem to be rolling their eyes much in the same way that we were seeing during the transition, where they were angry at Hegseth for not coming forward with information, with lawsuits, with all of these, with police reports, with all of these different things that they kept finding out he was a distraction during the transition."
"He's a distraction now, as you have said, and as you have reported and as I've reported, the White House felt like they had a pretty good run of it the first couple of months, and that was stopped by Hegseth and Signalgate," Scarborough added.
One adviser described the war plans group chat over Signal as the "first speed bump" of Trump's second term, Lemire said, and he corroborated Scarborough's reporting on the internal frustrations with Hegseth.
"You're right, during the transition there was a lot of frustration among Trump aides around Hegseth that he hadn't been forthcoming," Lemire said. "You just alluded to it, but Trump himself loved the guy. That's what I was told repeatedly – 'Hegseth's my guy,' Trump said. He loved him on Fox [News], he got to know him during the first term as he, as Hegseth championed some veterans causes. But what we're seeing now is that Trump himself is starting to cool on Hegseth, at least somewhat."
National security adviser Mike Waltz remains the most likely scapegoat for inadvertently adding The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to the group chat, thereby exposing the use of the non-secure Signal app for military planning, but Lemire said the president is concerned about Hegseth's leadership of the Pentagon.
"Waltz still remains the scapegoat in the building, even though by most objective measures what he did less dangerous, less of a national security risk than what Hegseth has done now more than once," Lemire said. "But, Waltz, the suggestion is that he probably is also a short-timer on this administration, but right now, the focus is on Hegseth and the chaos at the Pentagon, which goes beyond the Signalgate chats, but also because really, we've seen some of his top aides go, his hand-picked guys to be around him – we just heard one of them say right now that he's not sure which Pete Hegseth to believe in."
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