Can Hegseth’s Maga Playbook Spare Him Again?

Pete Hegseth has given Washington a roadmap for how to succeed in the Trump administration: Attack your enemies, revamp your story and never say you got it wrong.

When a Democrat ran an ad urging soldiers to disobey illegal orders, Hegseth threatened him with a court martial. After reports emerged that the military hit wounded survivors in a second boat strike, the Pentagon chief revised his initial timeline of watching the attack and said he ducked out before it happened. As for those sensitive texts he sent a Signal group chat about airstrikes on Yemen? Hegseth said they were not "war plans."

It’s a familiar MAGA playbook — one perfected by President Donald Trump — that carried Hegseth through a bruising confirmation and a string of early missteps, and has kept him in the White House’s good graces.

But as the Signalgate and boat strike controversies converge Thursday on Capitol Hill with the release of a Pentagon watchdog report and a top U.S. commanders’ briefing about the survivor incident, people close to the administration say he’s in a trickier spot now — and the usual game plan may not work.

“There's only so many times that you can stand next to the president and label everything as fake news and deny everything,” said a former senior Trump administration official. “It's worn out.”

So far, Hegseth isn’t changing his strategy. Even as POLITICO reported the inspector general’s conclusion that Hegseth’s Signal texts to a group of national security officials risked endangering U.S. troops, his allies went on the offensive.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the report a “TOTAL exoneration” of Hegseth and declared that “the case is closed."

As the Defense secretary met with MAGA-friendly media personalities at the Pentagon on Tuesday and attended the agency's first-ever Christmas tree lighting, his supporters on Capitol Hill appeared to take a page from his playbook. They dismissed the classified Signalgate report, which examined whether he violated the Pentagon’s standards for sharing classified information, even as Democrats renewed calls for his ouster.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) labeled it a “nothingburger.” And Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who helped the Pentagon chief overcome allegations of alcohol abuse during his heated confirmation hearing, said Hegseth was within his rights to put sensitive military details into a Signal chat that accidentally included a reporter from The Atlantic.

“Anybody that read it could not take a different opinion about it,” Mullin said. “There's no way that you can have any other opinion that he was well within his authority to do what he did.”

The Trump administration has continued to back the Defense secretary throughout his controversies, applauding his crusade against diversity programs and pointed attacks on MAGA enemies. The White House this week said the top military officer in charge of those strikes — Adm. Frank Bradley — was largely responsible for ordering the lethal missile attacks.

But Hegseth is still facing political risks. Senior Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees have promised an investigation of the Sept. 2 strikes against alleged drug traffickers, and other Republicans have started to voice concerns.

The Pentagon chief went after opponents of the drug boat operation over the weekend with a seemingly AI-generated Franklin the Turtle children’s book meme.

“When he takes this approach of, ‘this is fake news,’ and then hits back with some type of a troll…that only reinforces his biggest liability, which is that he's unqualified for the job,” said the former official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive Pentagon dynamics. “That just reinforces that he's not serious.”

The Defense Department laid the blame on false narratives that misrepresent a successful leader.

“As this administration knows, pushing back against the fake news is a full time job,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said. “Yet, despite the fabricated hit jobs and endless attacks, Secretary Hegseth has accomplished more at the Pentagon than any secretary before him, and he is 100 percent committed to revitalizing the warrior ethos and putting America first.”

The Pentagon chief also used the controversy over the boat strike to bash the media and his critics. “This is called the fog of war,” Hegseth said at a Cabinet meeting on Monday. “This is what you in the press don't understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill, and you nit-pick and you plant fake stories.”

Hegseth's comment that he did not witness the follow-up strike against shipwrecked civilians in the Caribbean — and the administration's move to place responsibility for the operation on Bradley — was met with anger and disbelief by some in the Pentagon.

“Lots of eye rolling,” a defense official said of the reaction within the agency. “It's despicable to blame Adm. Bradley for this.”

And even Hegseth's allies don't think he’s out of the woods — yet.

“The arc of the story is that it’s just a never-ending stream of efforts to undermine Pete Hegseth,” Schmitt said. “They didn’t get him in the confirmation process, [they] make a big deal out of this…I wouldn’t expect it to end with this.”

The release of the Signalgate report also showed that Hegseth's tactics could backfire. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), the retired Navy captain who the Defense Secretary threatened with a court martial, was one of the first members of Congress to tell reporters the results of the investigation.

Leo Shane III and Daniella Cheslow contributed to this report.