Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly been bringing his wife Jennifer with him to high-level meetings — and panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" wondered what is going on.
Hegseth, already on the hot seat for sharing military plans in a group chat that included a reporter who had been inadvertently invited, brought his wife to a Pentagon meeting with UK Secretary of Defense John Healey and another at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels.
Host Joe Scarborough joked that his wife — co-host Mika Brzezinski — kept him out of some important meetings.
"Of course, sensitive discussions being had there, a lot of people in the defense community, the intel community, very surprised," Scarborough said. "I mean, you know, Mika won't even let me go to meetings in the front office here. Like when, yeah, when we have to, okay, [MSNBC president] Rebecca Kutler, she got, you know, I tried to go and she's like, you stay outside the door, and I'm like, okay ...
"This is just one more example of Pete Hegseth showing what many critics on both sides were saying, that people are concerned, just very concerned that he's not up to the job."
Panelist Katty Kay agreed, saying that his wife's presence did little to assuage concerns about Hegseth's alcohol use.
"She followed him around all of his confirmation hearings," Kay said. "I mean, she was literally in every single one of those meetings. It looks like, I mean, it's nice, I guess, when your spouse is supportive of you, and this is a very stressful job for somebody, particularly somebody who kind of, you know, did seem to have a drinking problem, according to reports, and said he was going to give up drinking to do this job.
"I mean, that's bound to be stressful in and of itself, that maybe that's why he wants his wife with him to kind of, you know, give him that sense of security.
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"But, wow, it's weird that she is turning up in meetings with international officials around sensitive issues when we don't know what her role is or why she's there," Kay added. "I'm kind of thinking of all of the times in American politics where somebody tried – Bill Clinton, ask him, he tried to bring his wife on board to help sort out America's health care problem, and got roundly slammed for it, and there was no indication, I don't think, that Hillary Clinton went into any sensitive meetings around national security that she shouldn't have been in.
"So it is odd. I mean, you know, maybe going from being, I hate to say this, Joe, a television host to being secretary of defense is a little difficult. It's not the easiest thing in the world to make that transition."
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