Pete Hegseth ~Drinks~ Signals Again
By Jenny Braddock
April 21, 2025
It’s not every day a Fox News anchor gets to play war games with real generals and a direct line to the President — but Pete Hegseth has made a second career out of whispering military plans into unsecured Signal chats like it’s karaoke night in a bar full of four-stars.
Back on March 26, we reported that Hegseth had leaked operational plans to a private chat group. That breach sparked bipartisan concern, questions about backchannel authority, and exactly zero accountability.
Now he’s back in the spotlight — once again tied to sensitive chatter surrounding the latest U.S. strike in Yemen. This time through a second Signal leak that’s triggered another round of beltway outrage and the same old nothing from those in power.
After weeks of playing dumb or playing along, some Republicans are starting to flinch. Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon — himself a retired Air Force brigadier general — told The Hill this weekend that Hegseth “should be out” of Pentagon decision-making.
Which is a curious complaint, since Hegseth technically doesn’t hold any official role at the Pentagon — unless you count “President’s drinking buddy (who drinks enough for both of them)” as a cabinet-level position. Still, in Trump’s orbit, job titles are more of a vibe than a fact. He’s been referred to — reportedly by Trump himself — as the “acting Defense Secretary,” which makes about as much sense as calling Greg Gutfeld (Fox host, punchline merchant, and shortest man on the panel) the Surgeon General.
Bacon, trying to square the chaos with a soundbite, also made it perfectly clear who’s really in charge:
“I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.”
Translation: I have no control over this, but I’ll pretend I might have if this were a different multiverse.
This is the tell. The party of order and consequences has become a peanut gallery of powerless pundits. They know what Hegseth is. They always have. He’s a Fox News mascot with tactical cosplay — a man who stumbled off the soundstage and into the war room. And they let it happen. Because the leash isn’t on Pete. The leash is on them.
Back when the first leak broke, Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) — a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — tried to spin it with baseball logic:
“I don’t know how many strikes you get. In baseball, you get three. Maybe this is worth two…”
Then came the hopeful shrug:
“If mistakes like this continue to happen, we’ll deal with them as it happens. My hope and my expectation is that it won’t.”
Senator Cramer — so would this make it strike four? Five? Or are we in the part of the game where the umpire’s blind and the bat boy’s calling airstrikes?
Now comes a fresh twist: NPR reports that the White House is “privately weighing” whether to cut Hegseth loose. Leak discipline, bad optics, a rare flash of grown-up panic. But is it real?
Will Trump actually dump the one man who makes him feel like Patton in a tanning bed? Or is this just another round of chaos kabuki, where the mad king gets to stage a public flogging while keeping his favorite jester in the inner sanctum?
They embraced the spectacle until it got too loud to ignore. Now they’re trying to quietly pay the bar tab — without admitting who ordered the drinks.
And Pete? He’s still out there. Still talking. Still logged in.
More than likely, still on Signal.
Filed from a Georgetown private club, cloaked in a cloud of cologne, cigar ash, and collapsed credibility.
