Tuesday, during an appearance on CNN, network commentator Scott Jennings dismissed media criticisms of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
According to Jennings, President Donald Trump believes Hegseth is doing a “good job” and was unlikely to fire him over a “Democrat media-created controversy.”
“Look, I talked to some people over at the White House yesterday,” he said. “My sense is they think this is a tempest in a teapot. This new Signal chat came at the same time as the other one. My sense is they think they’ve corrected this. And look, it’s just not in their DNA to give in on things like this. And they spent an enormous amount of political capital to get him confirmed in the first place. We haven’t even been in office for 100 days yet. So I just think it’s not really in the Trump DNA to give in to what they would see as Democrat media-created non-controversy.”
Jennings added, “[Y]ou know, Donald Trump, the president, the commander-in-chief, may believe that Pete Hegseth, who he likes very much, is doing a good job. After all, the first major military operation of his presidency, our attacks on the Houthi rebels seems to be going quite well, being executed with precision. And so I just think that they, when they get into these moments where you have Democrats going crazy against one of his people that he likes very much, their instinct is to dig in and fight the opposition party on these things. And I just don’t get the sense from anybody in the White House that they think Pete Hegseth is doing a bad job. I mean, they believe morale among the soldiers is up since Trump became president. They believe recruitment is up, that people are wanting to come back into the military. So they’re looking at other metrics too, by which you would judge, is this person doing a good job? And I think they believe that he is.”
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