The Pentagon’s New ‘Press Corps’ Is an Utter Embarrassment — And It Won’t Help Hegseth

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

The Pentagon’s press briefing room played host to a surreal scene this week as MAGA influencers, ranging from Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec to former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz to Laura Loomer, took over the role of actual journalists trying to cover and hold accountable the largest and most consequential department in the U.S. government.

While there very well may be some well-intentioned citizen journalists in the new “press corps,” it’s undeniable that, on the whole, the one thing they have in common is loyalty to MAGA and President Donald Trump. Gaetz, of course, was appointed by Trump to be attorney general, a job Trump explicitly views as being his lawyer – a toady meant to run cover for him first and foremost. Remember what happened to Jeff Sessions?

Loomer, Posobiec, and so many others make their livings entirely off of keeping a pro-Trump audience happy and are financially incentivized to toe the line, attack the left, and never spark the ire of Trump or their viewers.

Trump had already broken with a long tradition of keeping the Pentagon apolitical by appointing a former Fox News weekend morning show host and longtime culture war warrior, Pete Hegseth, as defense secretary – a job he has now retitled secretary of war. During Trump’s first term, his defense secretaries were venerable national security figures with decades of experience who had actually worked inside the Pentagon and were widely seen as nonpartisan. They also happened to temper Trump’s worst impulses, which led to Trump firing Mark Esper after he refused to go along with Trump’s 2020 stolen election claims.

In Hegseth, Trump has found someone who not only dropped the guardrails for him, but seems to delight in pushing the boundaries even further than Trump might like to go. Trump made clear this week he would not have wanted a second deadly strike on survivors of an already disabled drug-running boat. Hegseth has defended that strike with glee, posting memes and boasting of yet another deadly strike.

The growing scandals surrounding Hegseth, both the strike on survivors and the Pentagon inspector general’s report on SignalGate, escalated this week just in time for the new “press corps” of MAGA influencers to take over the Pentagon. The traditional press corps was kicked out of the building after they refused to sign a pledge promising to follow Hegseth’s new rules for journalists, which in effect banned journalists from trying to solicit any kind of information that was not pre-approved. Even reliable pro-Trump outlets like Fox News and Newsmax refused to sign the pledge and subsequently gave up their presence in the building to a cadre of online influencers, many of whom are podcasters in their twenties.

One of those new press corps members, Cam Higby, asked Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson flat-out what his role in the building should be.

“In your mind, what is the purpose of the Pentagon Press Corps? Because it seems to be that a lot of people online, including the former press corps who have been tweeting at me, think that the purpose of the press corps is just to gather classified information and release it to the public. It seems like—if you’re an American journalist, yeah, I mean, you’re not a Chinese spy—why would that be the purpose of your job? I mean, how do you see it?” Higby asked, apparently looking for validation from the very person he is meant to hold accountable.

“Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I think the most important thing for the Pentagon Press Corps is twofold: to hold the administration accountable,” Wilson replied before blasting coverage of the Biden administration. She then said the quiet part out loud:

So holding us accountable, I think, is very important. But also communicating to the American people all of the work we’re doing and all of the work that our warfighters are doing every single day is a huge part of it. And that’s why we wanted to engage new media like all of you and bring you here, because the only people that watch CNN are those who are forced to in airports, right? Now we’ve got people who actually have huge audiences, huge numbers of viewers, and we’re able to get our message directly to the American people. We don’t have to rely on the MSDNC filters anymore. And I think for this department, that’s going to be a huge win.

While this new press corps may be a total affront to everything American democracy and the First Amendment are meant to stand for, in practice, who is in the building and has access to the Pentagon press secretary is likely to have little real impact on the American people’s ability to know what’s happening inside the building. The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other “mainstream” media outlets have been at the forefront of scooping all the latest facts on Hegseth’s actions and are certain to continue to do so. The only real trend to track going forward will be just how subservient the MAGA influencers are to Hegseth and whether or not any actually publish any real scoops or uncover any actual scandals.

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.