President Donald Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with The Atlantic, where he gave a hint that he's troubled by his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's job performance so far.
The Pentagon chief has been embroiled in scandal for weeks over his usage of the non-secure Signal app to plan military operations with individuals outside of government, including The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who the president invited to the interview along with two correspondents for the magazine.
“'This will be very, very interesting,' Trump said, by way of greeting us as we approached the Resolute Desk," wrote reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer. 'You think Biden would do this? I don’t think so.'"
"In private, Trump often plays against the bombastic persona he projects in larger settings — at rallies, on television, on social media," added Parker and Scherer. "He was launching a charm offensive, directed mainly at Goldberg. There was none of the name-calling or hostility he regularly levels at our magazine. He boasted about the 24-karat gold leaf he’d had imported from Palm Beach to decorate the Oval Office. 'The question is: Do I do a chandelier?' he asked. 'Beautiful crystal chandelier, top of the line.'"
Trump had promised them 20 minutes, but the reporters say they ended up speaking for about an hour about the latest challenges to his administration and his use of his powers to punish his enemies, and they said the president often avoided direct answers to recite lists of his accomplishments and tried to distance himself from controversial aspects of his presidency – including Hegseth's performance.
"When we mentioned the turmoil at the Pentagon, including recent reporting that Pete Hegseth had installed a makeup room in the building, the president smiled," Parker and Scherer wrote. “'I think he’s gonna get it together,' Trump said of Hegseth. 'I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.' Trump also said that [national security adviser Mike] Waltz was 'fine' despite being 'beat up' by accidentally adding Goldberg to the Signal chat. What had Trump told his staff after the controversy? 'Maybe don’t use Signal, okay?'"
The president's comments offered superficial support for his embattled Pentagon chief, according to Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei who spoke on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday.
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"I think every reporter who's ever sat down with him has had the same experience that Ashley does, which is, like, he will engage. All the mean tweets and all the crap that you see on on acts or social media?" VandeHei told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "You see very little of that in private. He actually will engage you. Unlike a lot of presidents, he'll ask you questions. His love language is a little bit of confrontation, so he's happy to have it."
"He really believes what he's doing, and I actually think the most interesting quote was that quote about saying he better get his act together. For him, even to admit that his act needs to get together is something he usually doesn't do," VandeHei added, "and he is aware that the Defense Department right now is a mess, and that is a problem for him, and that's ultimately when you lose a job around Trump.
"If you start to make him look bad and he can do it on his terms and doesn't feel like he's capitulating to the press, he'll make a move, and I think Hegseth is clearly on a clear warning that if you don't get your act together, you're out, which probably should be the way you do it. If you're losing all of your staff and you have a lot of controversy at what is kind of an important department, the Department of Defense kind of keeps us safe.,and so you do want sane, smart leadership."
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