Analysis: Even on the gravest of issues, GOP can’t summon the will to question Trump

It took Pete Hegseth just three weeks as defense secretary to make what the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee called a “rookie mistake” that left the senator “disturbed.”

Sen. Roger Wicker , R-Mississippi, rebuked Hegseth for telegraphing concessions Ukraine would need to make to end the war. He even suggestively said Hegseth “wasn’t my choice for the job,” despite voting to confirm him. And he said Hegseth “is going to be a great defense secretary.”

Just more than two months later, though, Hegseth’s mistakes just keep piling up. Yet a Republican congressional contingent that has shown precious little interest in oversight of President Donald Trump and his administration has shown almost no interest in asserting itself in this matter. It’s not just that GOP lawmakers are not calling for his ouster (with one notable exception); it’s that they don’t even seem interested in getting to the bottom of the readily apparent discord in the Pentagon.

And perhaps most tellingly, Republican elected officials have again shown almost no interest in asserting themselves even as the situation entails one of the gravest issues under their purview, national security.

So just to recap: Republicans have largely stood back and stood by in recent weeks as the Pentagon has been thrown into chaos and as Trump’s tariffs have thrown the economy into disarray.

If anything reinforces Trump’s dominion over the Republican Party, it’s that. The economy and national security are issues lawmakers tend to regard as among their most sacred and important, but even they apparently don’t rise to the level of doing something.

Amid what is now a second reported episode of Hegseth sharing highly sensitive information on the unclassified app Signal – this time with his wife, brother and lawyer – Hegseth and the administration have sought to shift the focus. They’ve argued that he wasn’t technically sharing classified information and sought to attack the media and the people who allegedly leaked the information about the episode.

That first assertion is a dubious one. The information Hegseth shared in the first Signal episode could quite obviously have jeopardized a mission and endangered American lives if it fell into the wrong hands, given that it offered details about upcoming strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen. We know what was said.

But to focus on Signal and the classification of the information is to miss the forest for the trees. It’s not just apparent carelessness with sensitive information; it’s also the other mistakes and discord.

In addition to the Ukraine comments Hegseth soon walked back, the Defense Department last month canceled a briefing in which it was due to share secret China war plans with Elon Musk, after sources told the Washington Post that Trump objected to it.

More recently, Hegseth parted ways with three of his top aides less than three months into the job. He has accused them of leaking, but they deny it and have accused Hegseth’s team of slander.

Another recently departed former top aide, spokesman John Ullyot, this weekend also authored an extraordinary Politico op-ed in which he described “total chaos at the Pentagon,” citing the exits of the other top aides.

And to be clear, these aren’t holdovers from the Biden administration. These are people who have long histories of working for Hegseth and for Trump. These are people Hegseth selected three months ago.

(Confronted with those facts Tuesday morning on Fox News, Hegseth said he had “unfortunately” chosen these people. He said of Ullyot: “Anybody that knows John knows why we let him go.” Ullyot has said his departure was amicable.)

The fact that these are Hegseth and Trump loyalists is crucial. These aren’t the kinds of establishment figures Trump chose for his first administration, leading to tensions.

Even if Hegseth is right that they were involved in leaking – something they deny and that Hegseth hedged on somewhat Tuesday – that would mean people who are that closely tied and loyal to Hegseth and Trump were so concerned about what was happening that they took extraordinary measures. Ullyot’s op-ed was certainly such an extraordinary measure – one he undoubtedly undertook while knowing it would earn him the venom of Trump and his supporters.

At the very least, surrounding himself with alleged apostates could be construed as a mistake Hegseth has now effectively acknowledged.

But despite all of it, few Republicans have said much of anything.

The only one thus far to call for Hegseth to go is Rep. Don Bacon , R-Nebraska, an increasingly sharp critic of some of the Trump administration’s actions who hails from a swing district. A handful of others, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn , R-Tennessee, and Rep. Abe Hamadeh , R-Arizona, have strongly stood by Hegseth. Wicker did take a significant step last month in issuing a bipartisan letter calling for an expedited inspector general’s report on the first Signal episode, but he hasn’t weighed in again.

Their silence is particularly notable given that nearly all of these episodes play off one of Hegseth’s chief, known liabilities during his contentious nomination process: his lack of experience. Hegseth ran veterans advocacy groups, but his most recent job was being a Fox News weekend host. The job of defense secretary is an immense one, involving overseeing millions of people and protecting the homeland.

All three Senate Republicans who wound up voting against him made that lack of experience the linchpin of their opposition.

“Managing the Department of Defense requires vast experience and expertise, as the department is one of the most complex and powerful organizations in the world,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski , R-Alaska, said, “and Mr. Hegseth’s prior roles in his career do not demonstrate to me that he is prepared for such immense responsibility.”

Bacon has now homed in on the same issue, going so far as to call Hegseth an “amateur.”

“Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right,” Bacon told Politico. “He’s acting like he’s above the law – and that shows an amateur person.”

The totality of the evidence suggests there’s at least something to what these prominent Republicans have said about Hegseth. But others saying that publicly and trying to do something about it would entail questioning Trump and earning his wrath.

Even when the stakes are national security – just like the economy – that’s apparently not a place Republicans are anxious to go. If anything demonstrates the exceedingly long leash Republicans are going to give Trump, that’s surely it.