The unrelenting onslaught of reports about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ranging from sharing war plans with his wife on an unsecured Signal app to screaming at military leaders at the Pentagon has become a major distraction for Donald Trump's White House, and a former President Joe Biden official had some advice for the current president.
Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," ex-State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller first stated Hegseth is in over his head and that placing him in such a high-profile job is coming back to bite the president.
"You mentioned Secretary Pete Hegseth," co-host Willie Geist prompted his guest. "Obviously, some of that classified information that was placed inside the Signal group chat. We learned this week about a second signal group chat, where you're sharing that information with his brother and his wife. We were talking a little bit in the break, and you said something that I've heard from a lot of other people who've worked in and around the government, which is this is maybe the toughest job in Washington, secretary of defense, one of the toughest jobs. It's near the top. we can say that it's no place to take a chance on someone, and it appears that this is backfiring extraordinarily."
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"Yeah. Look, there are cabinet agencies where you can hide a low performer –– I won't name any of them here because I don't need to hear from my friends that have worked at any of those agencies," Miller joked. "But there are. If there was one at the top of the list of where you can't hide a low performer, where you need someone strong, it's the Pentagon, because lives are at risk, American lives are at risk."
"And the thing that is most surprising to me about Pete Hegseth continued tenure in the job is that the administration is willing to take on this amount of risk, take on this amount of risk to our national security, and take on this amount of risk to Donald Trump's political future," he added. "Because every day that Pete Hegseth is in that job, they're at enormous risk that he bungles a major national security crisis, and they're left holding the bag."
Miller pointed out, "He has already made major mistakes transmitting classified information in a Signal group –– it's a major mistake that in any other administration, you would see a Cabinet member fired for. That was an excuse to say, look, we made a mistake, let's get out of this problem before we have a mistake that costs lives."
"They had they have to be able to see the risks that they're running, and the fact that they continue to run this risk to their own political future, and more importantly, to the safety of American soldiers, American servicemen and women, really defies belief," he advised.
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