Get Hegseth Off Television - Rob Horowitz

 As it becomes increasingly evident that the costs in lives and treasure of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran are going to be considerable, the last thing our nation needs is for the administration to keep thrusting forward Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as one of the main faces of this difficult conflict.  Instead of providing a calm, measured tone appropriate to a superpower during wartime, Mr. Hegseth amplifies and doubles down on Mr. Trump’s worst communication instincts, making preening and belligerence his calling card.

To watch Mr. Hegseth’s nearly daily televised briefings is to realize we have sure come a long way from Teddy Roosevelt’s still apropos maxim: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”  His need to continually say we have the strongest, toughest fighting force in the world as if this is some unknown fact and to do so in language more suitable for a video game than an actual war is impressing no one. It is certainly not a recipe for winning hearts and minds for the administration’s war aims, either here at home or around the world. 

Echoing the president in saying we are raining, “down death, fire and fury on Iran” during one of his briefings is just one of many instances of Mr. Hegseth sounding more like a professional wrestler, than a secretary of defense. Here is another choice example from prepared remarks he delivered at a different briefing. “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course classified effects,” Hegseth asserted. “All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives.”   Or a pithier case in point: "We are punching them while they're down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Compounding the negative impression Mr. Hegseth is leaving among all but the MAGA faithful is his decision to use these briefings in which the professed goal is to provide updates on the war as a platform for offering unfounded and churlish press criticism.  From this national security platform, the secretary of defense has opined that the only reason the press is prominently covering the loss of American lives in this war is because they are against President Trump, as well as attacked CNN for reporting as many other outlets did that Mr. Trump underestimated the possibility which unfortunately has come to fruition that Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Hegseth went as far as to cheerlead for the new owners of CNN, who are more Trump-friendly, saying, “The sooner David Ellison takes over the network the better.”   Mr. Hegseth also called for a “patriotic” press, conflating uncritical support for the Trump administration’s conduct of the war with patriotism, and implying that any criticism or skeptical questioning of the war effort is by definition unpatriotic.

Mr. Hegseth should realize that the audience for his briefings extends far beyond right-wing influencers to the broad American public-- most of whom are not yet persuaded that the decision to attack Iran was a wise one-- and to a global audience whose impressions of the United States under President Trump’s leadership was already decidedly negative. Two international surveys document the pronounced decline in perceptions of the United States in the rest of the world since Mr. Trump returned to the White House. “A majority of people surveyed had an overall negative perception of the U.S., marking a steep decline from last year,”  according to the 2025 Democracy Perception Index, which gathered the opinions of 110,000 respondents across 100 countries, reported Politico. Similarly, a Pew Research Center survey documents that in 19 of the 24 nations surveyed, more than half of the citizens say, “they lack confidence in Trump’s leadership of world affairs.”

Fortunately, Mr. Hegseth’s briefing partner, General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seems to implicitly understand the need for steady communication that highlights accomplishments on the battlefield without glorifying war. He is the only reason that these briefings have not been unmitigated disasters for the administration.

If Mr. Hegseth wanted to adopt the appropriate tone and communications style for this fraught moment, he could do worse than to learn from General Caine.  The odds of this secretary of defense, however, engaging in any meaningful learning behavior are long.

That leaves the administration with only one other option: get Pete Hegseth off television.