Military veterans and family members of active-duty troops gather in the Chicago to call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 27, 2025.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can dig into his Mr. Potato Head kit, pull out his angry eyes for the TV cameras, and fume about the press in his most self-righteous Fox News talking head high dudgeon. But it doesn’t change the fact that he and a group of some of the most senior figures in the Trump administration committed a colossally careless violation of national security.

That didn’t stop Mr. Hegseth from trying to deflect responsibility with a tired, ad hominem rant against the journalist who caught him and his colleagues discussing extraordinarily sensitive information about the planning and execution of a military operation in unsecure texts.

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It didn’t stop the National Security Council from characterizing one of the most embarrassing, and possibly the most dangerous, blunder so far in Donald Trump’s two stints as president as “a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”

It didn’t stop the White House from doubling down on Hegseth’s dissembling that no “war plans” were discussed in a message exchange in which he released details of an imminent military attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to the magazine editor who, for reasons yet to be fully explained, was inadvertently included in the chat.

And it didn’t stop Trump from claiming he knew........

© Times Union