From shaming Hillary Clinton to sharing strikes

In 2016, a Fox News host expressed outrage that Hillary Clinton had sent government emails over a private server while serving as secretary of state. 

This host said her behavior damaged the nation’s credibility. He said it warranted being fired “on the spot.” And he said someone who did “even 1/1000th” of what Clinton had done would be jailed.

“The fact that she wouldn’t be held accountable for this, I think, blows the mind of anyone who’s held our nation’s secrets dear,” he said on Fox News at the time, adding that those with top-secret clearances “know that even one hiccup causes a problem.”

That Fox News host, Pete Hegseth, is now the defense secretary, and he faces his own controversy over mishandling sensitive information after he texted to a group chat — which included a journalist from The Atlantic — details of a planned strike in Yemen before it was carried out. National security adviser Mike Waltz has taken responsibility for creating the group and the accidental leak.

The conversation happened on a smartphone app called Signal, which uses end-to-end encryption but is not a government service. Using it to discuss sensitive military matters is not standard protocol.

Hegseth did this again in a second instance, sharing similar intelligence details on a separate Signal chat on his personal phone with 13 people, including his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer, according to two people familiar with the matter. The New York Times first reported on the second Signal conversation Sunday.

Hegseth’s attitude over his own handling of sensitive information? A giant shrug. 

It’s a markedly different response from 2016, when he vehemently argued that the blame for the email server and not being careful enough with sensitive government information landed squarely on Clinton.

At that time, Hegseth said on Fox News, “How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling information?”

In his own situation, Hegseth has insisted that in both Signal conversations, he wasn’t sharing “war plans.”

“What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified,” Hegseth told Fox News on Tuesday.

At the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, Hegseth stood before cameras to contend he was the victim of a “smear” by unnamed sources. 

He bemoaned media coverage of what he called the “Russia hoax” and wondered why journalists still hadn’t returned Pulitzer Prizes for covering Russia’s influence on that election. 

All the while, Hegseth sidestepped questions about reports detailing his disclosure of sensitive defense planning to those outside the government. 

Instead, he has blamed the media. He has blamed government “leakers.” He has blamed disgruntled employees. 

“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax. Won’t give back their Pulitzers. They got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies,” Hegseth said, referencing reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A bipartisan Senate report in 2020 revealed how the Trump campaign embraced Russia’s intelligence operation in 2016 designed to hurt Clinton and help Trump.

“And as they peddle those lies, no one ever calls them on it,” Hegseth continued Monday. “See, this is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me!”

Jesse Lehrich, who served as Clinton’s foreign policy spokesperson on the 2016 campaign, argued that there was no comparison between the sensitivity of the information that Hegseth shared and that of Clinton’s emails.

“She wasn’t saying, ‘Hey Chelsea, hope you had a good day. By the way, here’s our war plans,’” Lehrich said, referencing Clinton’s daughter. “The entire [Republican] party’s yearslong insistence was that this was a national security scandal of the highest order. Obviously, they are flexible with their analysis depending on who’s at fault.” 

At the time of Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president, Lehrich recalled protracted, daily battles over what he described as the most innocuous of details, including whether the wording of a response from Clinton or an aide differed slightly from one instance to the next.

“From before she announced her candidacy, through the final days of the campaign, it was a never-ending, dominant story that was constantly leading the front page of the papers and the nightly news,” he said.

Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed days after The Atlantic story broke in March to comment on the Hegseth controversy. 

“It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me,” she wrote. “It’s the stupidity.”

A Defense Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. White House officials have contended that classified information was not shared in the conversations.

“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same nonstory, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said Sunday. “Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.” 

Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning journalism watchdog group Media Matters for America, said Hegseth is insulated from having to take questions head on — at least when it comes to the external narrative that’s playing to the Republican base. 

“All these incidents really only matter in the context of accountability and action, especially in this administration, if there’s a narrative around it … and the truth is, there’s not any sign that this matters, at least in the right-wing space,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s that they don’t care or that they don’t see it,” Carusone continued, referring to the administration. “It’s that they’ve inoculated themselves against it.”

He said the right is in a moment when it dominates the narrative, on social media, podcasts and cable TV news. Largely across those platforms, he said, conservatives aren’t focusing on the Hegseth Signal chat story or are defending him as a target of the left’s ire because he has vowed to carry out Trump’s initiatives and reform the Pentagon.

Still, Hegseth isn’t out of the woods. A Republican senator and Hegseth supporter has called for the Pentagon inspector general to investigate Hegseth’s communications. On Monday, the first Republican lawmaker called for Hegseth’s resignation. That followed criticism from Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who left his post last week and published an op-ed in Politico Magazine on Sunday.

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” Ullyot wrote. “From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”

“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account,” he went on. “Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”