‘Way Off the Reservation!’ CNN’s Harry Enten Argues Pete Hegseth’s Stunning Unpopularity Is ‘Dragging’ Trump Down

CNN data guru Harry Enten joined anchor Sara Sidner on Wednesday to discuss the fallout from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest scandal, in terms of what the polling data says. Hegseth is facing criticism over a reported second Signal group chat, which was revealed by the New York Times over the weekend, and included him sharing sensitive military data with his wife – among others.

“I mean, look, Pete Hegseth is a problem for Donald Trump. And the way we can see this pretty clearly is, you know, you sort of set the baseline level that you’d expect in terms of popularity in the Trump administration. That’s Trump himself,” Enten began, adding:

He’s at minus five points under that favorability. Not so hot, but not terrible. Look at where Pete Hegseth is. Way underwater at minus 14 percentage points, nearly 10 points below where Donald Trump is. If Trump is par, Pete Hegseth is way, way, way off the reservation at this particular point, so much more unpopular than you would expect of the average cabinet member.

And indeed, Pete Hegseth at this particular point is the least liked cabinet member in Donald Trump’s administration. In fact, he is the least liked Secretary of Defense — you have to go all the way back to Donald Rumsfeld back at the end of the Bush administration to find a Secretary of Defense who is less liked than Pete Hegseth is.

“I mean, this is the person over the most powerful military in the world that is saying a lot. It’s almost three times more unpopular than Donald Trump at this point. So what is it that people think of Pete Hegseth after all of this has come out?” Sidner followed up.

“Yeah, I mean, look, should you be using, you know, Signal essentially to be discussing military plans? And this, I think, sort of gives the game away. Using a signal to discuss military plans is not appropriate. You rarely find three-quarters of Americans agreeing on anything, but they agree on this, that using signal to discuss military plans, is a big no-no,” Enten replied, adding:

How about among Republicans? Even there, even there, you get a majority of Republicans agreeing that using signal to discuss a military plan is not appropriate. The bottom line is that Pete Hegseth is a headache for Donald Trump, a headache that personally I don’t think he needs, because Donald Trump is not involved in this, and yet he’s getting brought up because it’s a member of his administration. He is a headache, and he is potentially dragging Donald Trump down.

“Let’s look at sort of what the chances are that he may not be able to keep his job now. Right now we’re getting new reporting saying that Trump is sort of checking around making phone calls talking about him. But so far publicly he’s been behind Hegseth all the way. What are the chances that changes?” Sidner added.

“Yeah, okay. So let’s take a look. What’s the chance that Hegseth sits this out before July as Secretary of Defense per the betting markets on Monday? It was just 7%. Now look where we’re at. We’re at 30%,” Enten replied, noting:

A massive increase. So look, chances are Pete Hegseth will still be around come July. But the chance that he isn’t has gone way up and now there’s a real question. That’s why Donald Trump is sort of checking around. We’ll just have to wait and see and we’re heading more towards that 50-50 mark that maybe Pete Hegseth’s time at the Pentagon is winding down the number of Scaramuccis is – we will see.

Watch the clip above via CNN.