The White Home ‘stands strongly’ behind the embattled protection secretary, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt additionally stated.
Vice President JD Vance stated on April 23 that he has full confidence in Pete Hegseth regardless of renewed scrutiny over the protection secretary’s use of the Sign messaging app.
“I’ve 100% confidence within the secretary. I do know the president does, and actually, all the group does,” Vance instructed reporters in Agra, India, after visiting the Taj Mahal.
The vice chairman accused the media of attempting to “tank” Hegseth’s nomination from the beginning. He urged that current controversies surrounding the protection secretary have simply been an extension of these efforts.
“I feel he’s doing an ideal job,” Vance stated, pointing to rising army recruitment numbers as a “nice testomony” to Hegseth’s management.
“I want, frankly, the press talked extra about that, and never about nameless sourcing from random staffers.”
The most recent controversy follows studies that Hegseth allegedly shared airstrike schedules in a second Sign chat that included his spouse, brother, and private lawyer.
“What a giant shock that just a few leakers get fired and abruptly a bunch of hit items come out from the identical media that peddled the Russia hoax,” Hegseth stated whereas attending the annual Easter Egg Roll along with his children.
“That is what the media does. They take nameless sources from disgruntled former workers, after which they attempt to slash and burn folks and damage their reputations. Not going to work with me. As a result of we’re altering the Protection Division, placing the Pentagon again within the palms of warfighters, and nameless smears from disgruntled former workers on previous information don’t matter.”
White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt instructed reporters at an April 22 press briefing that the previous workers “leaked in opposition to their boss to information businesses on this room.”
Leavitt stated the administration wouldn’t tolerate “people who leak to the mainstream media, significantly in terms of delicate info.”
She additionally echoed Hegseth’s view that he was being focused in a “smear marketing campaign” to forestall him from enacting “monumental change” on the Pentagon.
“Let me reiterate, the president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth and the change he’s bringing to the Pentagon, and the outcomes that he has achieved up to now communicate for themselves,” Leavitt stated.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.