Warmongering Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is feeding President Donald Trump lies about how the U.S. is faring in the war with Iran, according to insiders.
While Hegseth has portrayed the escalating conflict as a string of victories bringing the U.S. ever closer to total triumph, Iran’s downing of an F-15E fighter jet and an A-10 warthog over the weekend revealed a far messier reality on the ground.
Inside the Trump administration, concerns are mounting that the 45-year-old defense secretary’s rosy claims of U.S. dominance are skewing the 79-year-old president’s understanding of the war he started more than five weeks ago, The Washington Post reports.
“Pete is not speaking truth to the president,” one administration official told the paper. “As a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information.”
Hegseth has been giving Trump a steady diet of short videos showing U.S. airstrikes on Iranian targets, fueling the commander-in-chief’s belief that the U.S. is on the verge of a decisive victory, U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
The Pentagon chief, who would like to be called “Secretary of War,” has overstated progress in destroying Iran’s missile and drone programs in particular, U.S. officials and administration officials told the Post.
After claiming that the U.S. has “overwhelmingly destroyed” the programs, Hegseth told reporters on March 31 that the number of Iranian missile and drone launches had dropped to their lowest level of any 24-hour period since the war began.
Hegseth was wrong, administration officials told the Post, citing lower 24-hour periods on March 14, 15 and 22.
“Documents sent around internally contradict Hegseth’s claims,” one administration official said.
Unlike Hegseth, who has boasted about “complete control of Iranian skies,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has not suggested U.S. jets can enter Iranian airspace without risk, the Washington Post reports.
But the defense secretary has Trump’s ear, with the president parroting claims of sweeping superiority in his public remarks.
“We’ve decimated them as a military. No Air Force, no Navy, very few rockets left,” the president said at his March 26 Cabinet meeting, where he was flanked by Hegseth. “We blew up so many. Hard to manufacture them, same thing with drones.”
Exactly a week before Iran shot down the two U.S. fighter jets, Trump told investors at a summit, “We’re just going after targets and again, they have no antiaircraft. So we’re just floating over the top looking for whatever we want and we’re hitting it.”
“It was a lucky hit,” Trump said while speaking about the downing of the F-15E fighter jet on Monday.
When reached for comment, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told the Daily Beast in a statement:
“On the heels of the two most daring and successful rescue operations in military history, the Washington Post is pushing a fake story of failure. It’s disgusting to see mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post root against our warfighters and promote a totally false narrative to give the public and our enemies the impression that the United States military is failing - all to score cheap points against President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” Parnell said.
Parnell then went on to hype up Hegseth’s handling of the conflict, claiming the U.S. is ahead of schedule.
“Since Operation Epic Fury began, Secretary Hegseth has provided the Commander-in-Chief with decisive military options to achieve our clear, scoped objectives: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal, annihilate their Navy, destroy their terrorist proxies, and ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said.
He added that ballistic missile and drone attacks are down significantly and claimed the majority of Iran’s largest naval vessels have been destroyed.
“The Washington Post should tell the truth and stop trafficking lies and propaganda,” he said.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Daily Beast:
“As Secretary Hegseth said, as the United States Military continues to meet or exceed all of our benchmarks under Operation Epic Fury, we still expect the Iranians to shoot back. President Trump has always known this, and he has always had the full picture of the conflict. Nothing has surprised him or our military planners, who were prepared for any possible contingency.”
