Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to keep reporters out of the Pentagon, unless media organizations agree to an excessively stringent set of rules that would restrict what they can report on, is doomed to fail.
That is according to long-time Washington D.C. observer John Heilemann who told a “Morning Joe” panel that the end effect of the ban that goes into effect on Wednesday will only heighten scrutiny of what the embattled Donald Trump appointee tries to pull off behind closed doors.
With even Hegseth’s previous employer, conservative Fox News, balking at the move and releasing a statement saying, “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections," Heilemann predicted the new rules — should they survive the firestorm they have set off — will blow up in the Pentagon chief’s face.
With MSNBC host Joe Scarborough calling Hegseth’s plan “boneheaded,” and pointing out, “I've never heard of anything like this before in American history,” Heilemann contributed, “But here's what makes it even crazier, is it's it's going to be futile. It will not work because anybody who covers, whether it's the White House or the Defense Department, knows the reporters are not going to stop digging for scoops and not going to stop holding the Pentagon's feet to the fire.”
“It's not going to stop calling sources and looking for the $900 toilet seat, or looking for the Pentagon Papers,” he pointed out. “They're just going to do it from outside the building. And every reporter who covers it is going to be like, you know, ‘This is a pain in the a--. I can't go to the Pentagon briefing anymore, and I can't sit with my sources in the Pentagon cafeteria, but I'm still going to talk to him. I'm going to talk to him off campus. I'm going to talk to him on chat. I'm going to talk to him on the phone. I'm going to talk to him on email."
“It's not going to work!" he asserted. “Apart from the fact that it's profoundly wrong, it's not going to have anything like the effect that Pete Hegseth thinks it's going to have.”
“There's another part of this too,” Scarborough interjected. “And that is Pete Hegseth is trying to stop the president of the United States from getting information that may not reflect well on him. How many times have we read throughout history the president of the United States reading the newspaper wherever he is and saying, ‘Wait. What's going on at the Pentagon? What's going on at Treasury? What's going on?'"
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