Defense

How Hegseth has transformed the Pentagon’s wartime press operation

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by Colin Meyn - 04/11/26 6:00 AM ET

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by Colin Meyn - 04/11/26 6:00 AM ET

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The spotlight of war inevitably shines on the Defense secretary’s personality and priorities.

Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon chief when President George W. Bush launched the Iraq War, stepped into the briefing room almost every day, sometimes at his own peril. In his memoirs, he reflected on his “misstatement” about weapons of mass destruction sites and “ill-chosen words” when he said “stuff happens” about the pillaging of a museum in Baghdad.

Robert Gates, the Defense secretary during President Obama’s surge in Afghanistan, generally left the briefings to his press secretary or, occasionally, the generals leading the effort on the ground. “Never miss a good chance to shut up,” was a favorite phrase of the career CIA officer.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, deployed to defend President Trump’s operation in Iran, has shaped the Pentagon’s wartime press operation in his own image: a combative evangelist seeking to battle “woke” agendas, promote the “America First” agenda and marginalize the mainstream media. The Department of Defense under Hegseth has been renamed the Department of War.

It’s too soon to gauge how history will judge Hegseth’s performance, or the Iran war more generally, but Trump’s Defense chief has already set a new precedent for Pentagon public relations, experts across the political spectrum told The Hill.

“The Pentagon is taking a more populist strategy, and I think this has everything to do with his background and where he’s comfortable and what he likes to do,” said Yvonne Chiu, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and professor at the United States Naval War College.

“So the populist strategy is really about talking, trying to talk directly to the people, trying to talk directly to service personnel and effectively bypassing their chains of command and communicating the things that he wants … and especially in emphasizing the political agenda that he’s supporting,” Chiu added.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host whose views on war were largely shaped by his deployments to Iraq, has long railed against military and civilian leaders who pushed nation-building abroad and diversity within the ranks, particularly efforts to expand the space for women and LGBTQ troops.

Most of Hegseth’s communications strategy before the war was comprised of slick social media videos announcing new policies, clipping his speeches or showing him working out with service members. He almost never took questions from the media.

The Pentagon tried to force media outlets to sign restrictive new rules for access to the building, eventually kicking out reporters who refused to sign it. A judge once again ordered the department this week to restore press access in response to a challenge from The New York Times.

Hegseth’s Iran war briefings often begin with him praising Trump and bashing journalists who challenge the administration’s narrative of the war. While the Pentagon has allowed mainstream media outlets into the briefings, Hegseth almost only takes questions from right-leaning outlets.

Another major change has been the relative scarcity of press briefings, especially as the war dragged on. In the first week of the Iran operation, Hegseth held two briefings with Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine and another with U.S. Central Command (Centcom) leader Adm. Brad Cooper. Since then, briefings have been increasingly sparse, with none for a 12-day span in March.

Chiu said the move away from regular briefings cut both ways.

“The fact is that the briefings are an opportunity for the press to ask questions and to ask hard questions, which they should be asking. And so the less you have, the less the Pentagon makes itself available to answer those hard questions, the less information people will get,” she said.

It’s also shielding the Pentagon from an outlet for public criticism of the war, she added. “It just isolates them in a way that I think is unhelpful,” Chiu said. “It’s another avenue for the executive to receive information from the public and to be held accountable.”

Flipping the dynamic

Anthony Constantini, policy director at the Bull Moose Project, a conservative advocacy group, said Hegseth was flipping the dynamics of past administrations, which have largely shut out right-wing outlets from the briefing room.

“Pretty much my entire life, Fox News was the only conservative media that was in the room when there were press conferences in the White House and Pentagon and State. So I’m not exactly really that upset that now the situation i