Colin Carroll, a former Pentagon official who was fired amid leaks at the Defense Department, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was focused on “weird details” after the Signal group chat scandal was exposed.
Carroll joined “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Saturday, where he shared more about his experience working in the Pentagon and witnessing firsthand a “tale of two Petes.”
“Do you think he’s OK?” Host Megyn Kelly questioned about Hegseth.
“I honestly, I don’t know. I’m not sure,” Carroll replied.
Carroll began telling a story about how once, when House Freedom Caucus members visited the Pentagon, Hegseth was sharp and performed well during the budget-related discussion.
“The secretary crushed that meeting. I have never seen a meeting like that. There’s not a secretary in living memory that could have done as good a job with those guys,” Carroll said.
“At the same time, I’ve seen the secretary in more internal meetings where he is super focused on, like, very, in my opinion, weird details and very agitated and kind of yelling and just, nothing’s good,” Carroll later said.
Carroll, the former chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve A. Feinberg, noted he didn’t know Hegseth before he took his administration position.
“I’m just telling you what I observed in the 90 days that I was there,” he said.
Carroll was fired last week and placed on administrative leave earlier this month as the department held an ongoing investigation about leaks. It came after two of Hegseth’s advisers were suspended and escorted out of the Pentagon.
The Defense Department said last month that it began an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.”
Carroll and Kelly’s conversation came as Hegseth faces mounting pressure to lead the department.
After the initial news that Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials used Signal to communicate about plans to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen shocked Washington, it was found he used a second group chat with family members and his personal lawyer.
Hegseth has maintained that no war plans were shared and the messages in the second chat were “informal” and “unclassified.”
The Trump administration has stood by Hegseth after the recent reports, but political insiders have questioned how the secretary is handling the pressure and whether Trump will one day replace him.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell defended Hegseth’s leadership in a statement to The Hill, saying Hegseth has done more to change the department in the administration’s first 100 days than most previous secretaries have done in four years.
“While the fake news media – who ignored the chaos created by the previous administration – focuses on gossip, we’re focused on RESULTS,” Parnell said.
Updated at 3:48 p.m.
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