Hegseth lashed out at DOGE official in tense Pentagon confrontation

[Zorro]

The episode was sparked by claims that a team leader with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting organization had called law enforcement on a colleague, people familiar with the matter said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at the Pentagon’s top representative from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service weeks ago in an angry confrontation arising from claims the DOGE official had summoned law enforcement to remove a subordinate from the building, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The tense encounter in early April occurred with Yinon Weiss, a tech entrepreneur and military veteran like the secretary who had just become Musk’s team lead at the Defense Department. Raising his voice at times, Hegseth demanded that Weiss explain why he thought he possessed such authority, these people said, all speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal by the Trump administration.

The altercation, which has not been reported previously, was set in motion after a DOGE lieutenant at the time, Justin Fulcher, stormed out of a one-on-one meeting with Weiss and went to Hegseth’s office to complain that he thought Weiss had reported him to the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, an internal police and security force. It’s unclear what triggered the dispute between Fulcher and Weiss, or whether law enforcement was ever called. However, the possibility that a DOGE official had acted unilaterally to evict someone from government property upset Hegseth, who considered it an unacceptable overreach, people familiar with the matter said.

It is unusual for a Cabinet secretary to engage so directly with seemingly minor disciplinary matters involving lower-level staff. The episode coincided with a tumultuous period for Hegseth after the disclosure in March that he used an unclassified group chat with other top administration officials to relay highly sensitive military planning for an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen. It also spotlights the friction that has sometimes existed between senior Pentagon officials and those assigned to DOGE, whose mandate to dramatically gut the federal workforce and slash government spending has been complicated by national security concerns.

https://wapo.st/3UcsXtY

[Swede]

1. You hate to see it.

[Prairie Gates]

2. Clowns yelling at each other

Chapter 3 of the MAGA Leadership Manual: Yell, Scream, Call People Losers! Your Path to a Productive Workplace.