President Donald Trump said he spoke with his embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following reports he used the unsecure Signal chat to discuss classified information and fired some of his top aides, leaving the Pentagon embroiled in chaos.
"I think he's gonna get it together," Trump said of Hegseth, during an interview with The Atlantic magazine over the weekend. "I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him."
Meanwhile, one former senior staffer, Colin Carroll, who served as chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, said in a lengthy interview with Megyn Kelly on Saturday there's a "culture of fear and toxicity" in Hegseth's office. "No one's going to want to come into that environment."
Carroll, along with Hegseth's former top aides, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, were fired amid accusations by the defense secretary that they leaked classified information to the press. Both Carroll and Caldwell strongly deny any leaks in separate interviews and on X, and instead say they were fired because they had trouble working with Hegseth's chief of staff Joe Kasper, who oversaw what they call a dysfunctional office. NPR has repeatedly contacted Kasper, who has not returned phone calls.
In her interview with Carroll, Kelly says she reached out to Kasper, who released a statement: "The idea that there was dysfunction is an argument of convenience, which in hindsight is being weaponized by a small group which is rallying against the president and the secretary in their own interests." Kasper has since stepped down as chief of staff and will now serve as a "special government employee" working on science, technology and industry.
Meanwhile, Trump's National Security Adviser Mike Waltz went on Fox News on Sunday to defend Hegseth. "He is leading the charge, and he has no tolerance for leaking," Waltz said, calling any suggestions of chaos or dysfunction a "media narrative," and that Trump officials "are going to power through." Waltz, who took responsibility for creating a Signal chat group that inadvertently included a journalist last month, sidestepped a question about the departure of senior aides, including Kasper.
On Friday the Pentagon announced four new senior advisers had been promoted; they include Col. Ricky Buria, a former junior military assistant; Justin Fulcher, a member of the DOGE team embedded at the Pentagon, and Patrick Weaver, formerly a Department of Defense "special assistant."
Sean Parnell, who had been the Pentagon's chief spokesman, was promoted to assistant to the secretary of defense and senior adviser.
All those named have little experience at the Pentagon, and those jobs are often filled by those with years serving in the military, government or industry.
Parnell, a Pittsburgh native, served in the military for six years, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2020, and the next year launched a short-lived campaign for the U.S. Senate. Fulcher, who Forbes magazine featured in its 30 under 30 list in 2017, came into the Pentagon as part of tech billionaire Elon Musk's DOGE team. Forbes later featured him again in an article questioning his credentials as an entrepreneur. Weaver graduated from college in 2017, and served in the first Trump administration at the Department of Homeland Security.
Wilson, 26, had been deputy press secretary and will now be acting press secretary. Just last month, she was criticized by members of Congress and Jewish groups for online posts and past public commentary she made before joining the Trump administration.
It's uncertain if those appointments will be permanent or placeholders. The White House has reached out to officials who served in the first Trump administration, searching for staff who will "right the ship," at the Pentagon, according to one former Trump official who requested anonymity to describe internal administration deliberations. Another official has told NPR that the White House has begun the preliminary process of seeking a replacement for Hegseth.
Carroll in his interview with Megyn Kelly worries that the disruption at the upper reaches of the Pentagon could spell trouble in a crisis. "We have not had a major challenge at this point," said Carroll, a Marine combat veteran and Naval Academy graduate. "So I don't know how the department would function if we had like the fall of Kabul," referring to the chaos when U.S. forces left the Afghan capital in August, 2021. "That's my biggest fear."
Carroll said he would like to return to the Pentagon and resume his work with Deputy Secretary Feinberg and worries about the programs he was working on without the needed staff. "The president's agenda is at risk right now," he said, pointing to the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system and shipbuilding, concerned there will be delays with the personnel shakeup.
A number of Democrats have called for Hegseth's ouster, and on Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS that Hegseth has "created chaos" at the Pentagon.
"The fact is, Pete Hegseth was not qualified to take the job as secretary of defense, and he has shown that time and again," Shaheen said Sunday on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.
One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a retired Air Force brigadier general, said he didn't believe it was in his place to call for Hegseth's resignation but was critical of the defense secretary's Signal chats about an imminent attack on Yemen.
"I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn't have a lot of experience," Bacon, who now chairs the subcommittee on cyber issues, told reporters last week. "I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That's a concern."
Hegseth, 44, is a former Fox News host and National Guard major who served in Iraq and Afghanistan but had no experience in government when he was nominated by Trump to lead the Pentagon, which oversees some 3 million civilian and military employees and has a yearly budget of some $900 billion. Hegseth had less experience than any other defense secretary since the position was created in 1947. He also overcame allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and questions of financial mismanagement at two veterans' groups he ran.
Hegseth addressed his lack of experience at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing in January, saying he had "dust on his boots" from his combat deployments and vowed to be a "change agent" and "disruptor" at the Pentagon that was too focused on a "woke" ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion. He narrowly won Senate approval by a vote of 50-50, with Vice President Vance casting the necessary tie-breaking vote.
Hegseth immediately became a "disruptor" and faced some criticism for firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, the second African American to hold the post, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first female top officer in the Navy. He also ended minority and women's student clubs at West Point and had books on race, gender and transgender issues removed from the Naval Academy library.
But within the last month, he's faced scrutiny that he was relaying classified information to those without clearances. Hegseth was being given details – including timing, targets and ordnance for a March 15t strike on Houthi targets in Yemen – by Gen. Erik Kurilla, who oversees Middle East operations, and was communicating through a classified system. Hegseth in turn gave minute-by-minute updates to top White House officials through Signal, unaware that a reporter was mistakenly added to the chat.
Hegseth claimed the chats included only "media strategy," but the reporter in the chat, Jeffrey Goldberg, provided a transcript of some of that information, which members of Congress and retired military officials said was clearly classified. And their concern was that an adversary could hack those unsecured communications and put pilots in danger.
Then last week, The New York Times reported that there was a second Signal chat with the same information that included Hegseth's wife, brother and personal lawyer.
Meanwhile, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America released the results of a survey of their membership about the Signal controversy.
In the survey, IAVA veterans overwhelmingly (86%) believe that there should be accountability for the leak of classified information over Signal by administration officials, including more than 3 out of 4 of IAVA veterans that identify as Republican. "It's clear that IAVA veterans are taking note of the actions of the new Administration," said IAVA's CEO Allison Jaslow. "Most want to see accountability for the leak of classified information by Administration officials that made headlines recently, just as they know they'd be held accountable for the same."
NPR disclosure: Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation.
Quil Lawrence contributed to this story.
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