Pete Hegseth (pictured) may be wondering what former Fox News colleague Brian Kilmeade knows after wrongly referring to him as the ‘former’ Secretary of Defense. Hegseth came out swinging in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday, blaming ‘disgruntled former employees’ for damaging leaks about his tenure at the Pentagon as he tries to save his job.

However, Kilmeade (pictured left) made an epic error when introducing his ex-Fox News pal, already suggesting he was a thing of the past. Speaking on Fox & Friends – a show Hegseth used to co-host – he introduced their chat with clips of Donald Trump defending Hegseth. ‘Here to set the record straight himself, uh, the former secretary ― current secretary of state, Pete Hegseth,’ Kilmeade said. Neither appeared to address the mishap and the rest of the interview went on as planned. During the talk, Hegseth cast blame on former staffers trying to ‘sabotage’ President Trump’s agenda and said the ‘deep state’ was working against him. ‘They have come after me from day one like they have come after President Trump. I’ve gotten a fraction of what President Trump has endured,’ he told Fox and Friends. ‘It is not hard to do this job, I know exactly why I’m here.’

Hegseth is fighting for his political future amid the revelation of a second Signal chat that contained war plans, senior staffers being escorted from the Pentagon amid a leak investigation, and allegations the Defense Department is suffering a ‘full-blown meltdown.’ ‘Folks leaking and pushed out are attempting to leak and sabotage the president’s agenda and what we’re doing,’ Hegseth said. ‘It is unfortunate, it is not what I do, not how we operate.’ He said the allegations are ‘not based on how we’re operating around here and none based in reality.’ ‘Disgruntled former employees are trying to save their [expletive],’ he said. Trump is standing by his defense secretary – for now. ‘It’s just the same old stuff,’ the president told reporters at the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday. ‘He’s doing a great job. It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing so you don’t always have friends when you do that.’

The president also suggested: ‘Ask the Houthis how much disfunction there is. There’s none. Pete’s doing a great job. Everybody’s happy with him.’ And Hegseth said he’s going nowhere. ‘I have not blinked and I won’t blink, because this job is too big and too important for American people and I’m grateful for every opportunity president has given me,’ he said. But NPR reported the White House is looking at replacing the embattled Pentagon chief – which the White House denied – and there are multiple reports of chaos inside the walls of the Defense Department.

The atmosphere in the Pentagon includes screaming matches in Hegseth’s inner office among aides; a growing distrust between the military and civilian personnel who staff the building; and bureaucratic logjams that have slowed down progress on some of President Trump’s key priorities, such as an ‘Iron Dome for America’ missile-defense shield, defense officials told The New York Times . Adding to the work place pressure cooker, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is looking to cut 200,000 jobs from the Pentagon’s civilian work force of 750,000. The pressure has increased on Hegseth after the New York Times reported he started a Signal chat with friends and family that contained details of a March attack on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis. Hegseth didn’t deny the second signal chat. But he told Fox & Friends it didn’t contain classified information.

‘I look at war plans every single day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordination for media coordination and other things,’ he said. The defense secretary said he’s focused on his job. ‘If they want to keep leaking to sabotage the president’s agenda, that is unfortunate, that is how leaking works in this town. We focus on recruiting, rooting out DEI, securing the border, and supporting the president’s agenda,’ he said. But Hegseth received another blow this week when John Ullyot, the former spokesman who announced his resignation from the Pentagon last week, claimed the Defense Department is in ‘chaos.’

Writing an op-ed for Politico on Sunday, Ullyot knifed his old boss and exposed the chaos currently unfolding inside the Pentagon – before sharing his belief that Trump should fire Hegseth. He noted he’s a ‘longtime backer of the secretary,’ and ‘value[s] his friendship.’ But he then let loose on Hegseth, saying the Pentagon is in ‘a full-blown meltdown’ and that has devolved into ‘total chaos.’ He added that ‘the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.’ Hegseth is placing the blame for the bad press on senior staffers who were escorted out of Pentagon by security last week as part of leak investigation.

Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, was suspended a day after Dan Caldwell (pictured), a senior adviser to Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, the Pentagon’s deputy chief of staff, were put on administrative leave. Caldwell gave his first public interview to Tucker Carlson on Monday and denied leaking anything – before saying he was telling establishment Pentagon staffers things they didn’t want to hear . He said the investigation was ‘weaponized’ against him because he ‘threatened’ established ideas within the Pentagon’s walls. ‘I was out there advancing things that a lot of people in the foreign policy establishment didn’t want,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t justify what’s happening to me but let’s just be honest that is the nature of the games played in D.C.’

He also inferred that insider in-fighting led to the firing of his colleagues Selnick (pictured) and Carroll, separate from those that led to his own termination. The leak investigation at the Pentagon began on March 21 when Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, ordered the probe. But now Kasper is leaving his chief of staff job and moving to another part of agency.

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