As Pentagon insiders tell it, there have been countless cringe moments since Pete Hegseth took over the Defense Department last year.

Like when he decided to rename the agency the ‘Department of War’ and rebrand his role as ‘war secretary’ without congressional approval.

And when he mishandled classified military intelligence by sharing sensitive air strike plans against Houthi rebels in Yemen in unsecured group chats.

And when, during a recent signing ceremony packed with Latin American and Spanish-speaking leaders, he proudly declared: ‘I only speak American.’

But in conversations with the Daily Mail this week, four military and three civilian officials at the Pentagon said that in the month since the Trump administration started attacking Iran, they and many of their colleagues have lost the scant confidence they had in the polarizing defense secretary whose remarks about the war they slam as ‘reckless’.

Our sources took particular umbrage with the former Fox News host’s comments during a prayer service he held at the Pentagon last week, calling on God to ‘pour out your wrath’ and urging ‘overwhelming violence of action’ in Iran. 

Beyond their discomfort with him mixing the military and religion, they said he made the conflict sound like a holy war, viewing his remarks as ‘hotheaded’, ‘bloodthirsty’ and ‘feral’.

‘It rattled me, his lack of equanimity, his disregard for the kind of professionalism you need in that position, especially during a war,’ an Army official told us. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing mounting criticism from Pentagon insiders over his handling of the Iran conflict

The US and Israel launched strikes against Iran in late February – marking the most significant American military action in the region in years. Plumes of smoke are seen rising after a strike in Tehran on March 3 

‘It rattled me to the core. I think that’s true for a lot of folks in the building.’

A Pentagon official whose job entails monitoring military ethics, said: ‘We strive, we have always strived to be principled, not vicious,’ added ‘He’s making us seem like monsters.’

The Defense Department pointed out to the Daily Mail that it is the secretary’s duty to provide the president with ‘clear, direct, decisive military options’.

‘Secretary Hegseth is leading the way in delivering on the President’s objectives with precision and resolve – ensuring the Commander-in-Chief has every possible option at his disposal.,’ said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson.

‘Our record-breaking recruitment numbers show that warriors across the nation are eager to serve this President and this Secretary.’

Each of the seven Pentagon insiders who spoke to the Daily Mail did so on the condition of anonymity, noting a more than year-long effort in the department to root out military and civilian workers who talk to journalists.

Hegseth, 45 – a former infantry major in the Army National Guard who served from 2003 to 2021 – has taken a decidedly antagonistic view of mainstream reporters covering the department, blocking access to information. 

He also has been criticized for withholding or limiting release of key details about the war to members of Congress, including Republican allies of the administration.

Internally, the defense secretary has ousted several high-level military officials whom he saw as challenging his much-touted ‘warrior ethos’, firing the top judge advocate generals of the Army, Navy, and Air Force on grounds, he argued, that they were too restrictive and risk-averse in combat. 

On Thursday, Hegseth ousted the highest-ranking US Army officer. General Randy George, a Biden appointee, was told to step down and take immediate retirement, CBS News reported.

All the officials we spoke with said they have lost respected colleagues whose expertise would have been indispensable during war time, when as one put it, ‘we need critical thinkers, naysayers willing to speak out.’

The criticism comes as US forces are engaged in a major conflict in the Middle East.

None would comment on the merits of the Iran conflict, taking care to note that the decision to go to war is political and above their pay grade.

What mainly troubles them, they said, is the relish with which Hegseth seems to take in waging it. 

Five of them said they recoiled last week when, speaking in the Oval Office, Hegseth said: ‘We negotiate with bombs.’

‘Nobody, even Defense Department personnel, wants a leader licking his lips about a major regional conflict,’ a civilian military official who works in public messaging said.

Another who works in recruitment said such comments make it harder to sign up new troops.

‘Imagine being a parent hearing him sounding like we take war lightly. Are you going to let your 18-year-old enlist?’

That source added that even the branding of the war as Operation Epic Fury connotes an emotional rather than principled military stance – based on ‘rage’ rather than ‘sound standards, tactics and strategy.’

‘That name never should have been approved,’ said one of the civilians we interviewed.

Speaking at a press conference at the Oval Office last week, Trump admitted that Hegseth ‘didn’t want the war to be settled’

Hegseth claimed that it was the first time in history that a modern military like Iran’s had been so destroyed

What also concerns the Pentagon insiders is that, in the lead-up to and during the biggest US military conflict since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they say Hegseth – who quietly visited troops in the Middle East over the weekend – and his top aides have seemed focused on far lesser matters.

The day before the war started on February 28, for example, the secretary was threatening to cut support for the Boy Scouts (now ‘Scouting America’) and end Pentagon involvement with Ivy League schools because of their inclusivity policies.

A week into the conflict, when six US Army Reserve members had been killed in a drone attack on a facility in Kuwait, he was working behind the scenes to strip editorial independence from Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-administrated daily news outlet that covers the military.

Two weeks into the war, Hegseth was issuing new grooming policies for military members, requiring them to prove sincere religious beliefs that would justify being allowed to have facial hair.

And a month in, he was cutting the number of religious affiliation categories for military chaplains from more than 200 to about 30 and dissing the chaplain corps as ‘nothing more than therapists’ focused more on ‘self-help and self-care’ than faith or virtue. 

This, some of our sources noted, came as thousands of military members were being deployed into a war zone and likely relying on chaplains for spiritual guidance.

‘His timing boggles the mind,’ one said.

Hegseth’s critics in the Pentagon see his preoccupation with those non-war-related issues as sweating the small stuff while about 50,000 service members are serving in the Middle East, at least 200 have been injured and 13 killed since the start of the war. 

Hegseth quietly visited troops in the Middle East over the weekend

Hegseth, pictured bowing his head in prayer alongside President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other cabinet members at the White House , has also been criticized for mixing the military and religion

Two of the sources we interviewed also expressed discomfort with the apparent sanctimony of a defense secretary with a history of excessive alcohol consumption, on-air hangovers and acts including a 2017 sex assault allegation that he denied, but for which he acknowledged paying his accuser a civil legal settlement.

One pointed out that Hegseth acknowledged having multiple extramarital affairs while in the military, where the code of conduct allows for members to be kicked out for cheating on their spouses.

Two others brought up Hegseth’s description in a 2024 podcast of the time when, serving in the National Guard in Iraq, he told his platoon to disregard a commander’s directive not to fire on someone unless they raised their weapon to shoot at U.S. troops. 

That source noted the slippage between what he called Hegseth’s insubordination and his attacks on Democratic Senator and retired Navy Captain Mark Kelly and other members of Congress for advising troops to refuse unlawful orders especially when it came to questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean.

Most recently, the Financial Times has reported that Hegseth’s financial broker at Morgan Stanley sought to make a multimillion-dollar investment in major defense contractors in the lead-up to the Iran war, raising ethical questions. The Pentagon has denied wrongdoing.

‘There’s a hypocrisy to him that galls me. It will never stop galling me,’ one of the insiders told us.

That source, a female Army officer, described ‘a pervasive vibe of gender and racial discrimination’ in the Pentagon since Hegseth took over in January 2025. 

She said he has conveyed the impression that women and people of color owe their jobs to DEI efforts, insulting scores of officers who have risen through the ranks on merit.

‘As if we haven’t all worked our behinds off for decades for our positions.’

Her frustrations were echoed in a report by the New York Times last week that Hegseth has been blocking the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals — two women and two black officers singled out on a list otherwise made up mainly of white men.

Of particular issue, the Times reported, was the promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant, who is black, to command the Military District of Washington, which often performs ceremonial duties with the president. 

Hegseth’s chief of staff Ricky Buria reportedly told the Army secretary that ‘President Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events,’ according to the Times. 

Buria denied the account, calling it ‘completely false’.

Gant’s promotion was pushed through, nevertheless. Within the Pentagon, some of the Daily Mail’s sources told us respect has waned for the joint chiefs of staff – leaders of each of the military’s six branches – for not doing more to insist that the messaging around the Iran war be strictly fact-based and professional. 

They said seasoned officials who work with military tactics, strategy, legality and ethics have lamented under Hegseth’s leadership an ‘anti-intellectual culture change’ in the department and, as one put it, ‘outright scorn for expertise’.

‘If I had to guess, I’d say he’s more hated in the building than outside it,’ she said.

That, she added, is mainly because ‘we see up close the way he mouths off rather than listens’, the way his ‘jaw clenches’ and ‘fists pump’ when he perceives his authority is questioned, and the way his ‘zealotry… looks live and in-person’.

Army Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant joined Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on a visit last month to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 

Officials within the Defense Department describe a shift from skepticism to alarm over Hegseth’s leadership

The sentiment among the Pentagon sources we interviewed has shifted since the start of the war from, as one put it: ‘this guy’s a joke’ to ‘this guy’s going to get our people killed’.

Within the department, our sources said officials are paying close attention to how Hegseth is perceived by the general public.

According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in January – before the war – he had a 41% unfavorable rating, with 26% favorability and 31% of Americans having never heard of him. 

A Quinnipiac University poll that same month found 49% public disapproval and 40% approval of his performance. 

A more recent poll by Yahoo, conducted in March, found 52% of voters disapproved of the job he was doing at the Pentagon, while only 37% approved.

Still, Hegseth seems to hold Trump’s support and shows no sign of stepping down. 

Despite making a point of noting during a cabinet meeting last week that critics say ‘he made a mistake’ in hiring him, Trump said that Hegseth was ‘born for this role’ and ‘doing great’.

Several of the sources we spoke with told us they hope that Hegseth’s days are numbered now that Trump’s legacy hangs on the war’s success and the public is seeing more of him than ever. 

Two – both of whom oppose prayer sessions in the Pentagon – told us they say their own personal prayers in hopes of Hegseth’s ouster.

‘More than 2 million Americans in uniform, their lives to some degree hinge on this clown we have as secretary,’ one told us. 

‘God help us through a war he seems so giddy about. God help all of us get through this in one piece.’