5 Times Pete Hegseth Proved He's The Most Paranoid Member Of Donald Trump's Cabinet

Before becoming the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth was a Fox News TV personality with a long history of awkward moments caught on camera. However, once Donald Trump was reelected for his second term in office, Hegseth began his new career as a government official and the man in charge of the Pentagon. As the months have worn on, it seems that some cracks have begun to show in Hegseth's facade.

As more and more controversial things surface about Hegseth's past — and more scandals arise regarding his performance as Secretary of Defense — the man has gotten progressively more paranoid. Hegseth has begun taking precautionary steps that no other SECDEF has ever considered, including barring Pentagon staffers from speaking to elected officials, and blocking media access. According to reports, he's quietly been spinning out of control as more and more drama builds around his handling of the military.

Paranoia is not a unique quality when it comes to members of Trump's inner circle and tumultuous second administration. However, Hegseth has been raising the bar when it comes to eyebrow-raising proclamations, intense outbursts, and his inexplicable war against beards in the armed forces. Here's a look at just a few times that Hegseth has already proven that he's dialed the paranoia up to 11.

Following a string of leaks and releases of information, Pete Hegseth decided to forbid Pentagon staffers from speaking with members of Congress without prior approval. The announcement was made in a memo issued in October 2025, which made its way to the press (per Axios). The memo came amid a slew of intentional and accidental leaks to the media regarding Defense Department operations and plans.

Ironically, one of the worst leaks was caused by Hegseth himself, which might be why he's been on the war path in an effort to save face. Hegseth and several other high-ranking military officials used the unencrypted messaging service Signal to coordinate attack plans and inadvertently (and inexplicably) included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, in the group chat. The entirety of the embarrassing debacle was reported on by The Atlantic, leading to the now-infamous "Signal-gate" scandal.

As part of Hegseth's war on the press, he also confiscated the badges of Defense Department reporters who refused to sign a wildly restrictive and draconian pledge intended to put limits on the constitutional freedom of the press. The pledge was openly refused and condemned by nearly every journalistic institution, including the right-leaning Fox News. The new press rules also require journalists to be escorted by official personnel and demands that the media does not report on information that hasn't been approved for official release.

Back in April 2025, after Pete Hegseth became embroiled in the embarrassing group chat leak scandal, unnamed sources told The Telegraph that Hegseth had gone into "full paranoia, back-against-the-wall mode" and was not willing to trust anyone other than his wife, former Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. Reportedly, Hegseth invited his wife along with him to top-level meetings with foreign leaders in a move that allegedly baffled longtime Pentagon vets and government officials.

"I have never in my professional life seen a spouse sit in on a meeting with counterparts from other countries, where they talk through substantive matters related to our relationship with these foreign militaries," a former Pentagon staffer said to CNN (via The Telegraph).

Hegseth's messy love life and romance history has been a subject of scrutiny since becoming a high-ranking government official. Rauchet is Hegseth's third wife, and accusations (and admissions) of infidelity have haunted him throughout his adult life. He began a relationship with his second wife while still married to his first wife, then later began cheating on his second wife with the woman he's married to now. He's also candidly admitted to having five total affairs during his first marriage, according to a 2024 Vanity Fair profile. It seems possible Rauchet's ubiquitous presence could be a result of Hegseth's dodgy history of infidelity, although it's impossible to know definitively.

Since joining the Trump administration, Pete Hegseth has been doing whatever he can to, as he sees it, clean house. This means he's been firing Pentagon staffers left and right, and even implementing new rules that make it easier to terminate civilian employees, likely in an effort to make sure the remaining employees are like-minded loyalists. In a memo issued in September 2025, which was officially titled, "Separation of Employees with Unacceptable Performance," the Pentagon's HR department was instructed to "act with speed and conviction" when dismissing employees whose work was supposedly deemed unacceptable. Essentially, it was designed to make firing nearly anyone easier and quicker.

When Hegseth was appointed to his role as the Secretary of Defense, he drew heat for his dismissal of high-ranking officials who had been linked to the Biden administration. This included the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Q.C. Brown, and numerous other towering figures that Hegseth disagreed with politically. In October, 2025, Lt. Gen. Joe McGee retired after repeatedly clashing with Hegseth over military operations and strategies in Ukraine and Russia. A source told CNN that McGee "had a target on his back for a while now," and was allowed to retire instead of getting fired outright. But Hegseth's insistence on only working with people who agree with everything he says is likely only going to fuel his echo chamber.

Nothing says "rampant paranoia" like making people take random, unexpected polygraph tests. Apparently, this is exactly what was going down in the Pentagon in April 2025, amid a flurry of embarrassing leaks to the press. Hegseth reportedly began hunting for anyone in the department who may have been giving information out. As part of that witch hunt, he began forcing people to take lie detector tests at his discretion. Apparently, these tests were reportedly used to threaten even high-ranking Pentagon officials, including Army Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, according to an expose from The Wall Street Journal.

However, Hegseth's reign of polygraph terror reportedly came to an end when he was instructed to knock it off by the White House. The Washington Post reported in July that Hegseth's former special assistant, Patrick Weaver, complained to officials in Trump's inner circle about the overzealous targeting by Hegseth. The concern made its way up the chain and led to a call from someone close to President Donald Trump, telling Hegseth to quit implementing polygraph tests. Since this news became public, Weaver himself left his job at the Pentagon and became one of the many staffers to reportedly get pushed out.

The assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025 seemingly sparked a brand new level of paranoia in Pete Hegseth. According to The Daily Mail, the former Fox News host has become obsessed with his personal security following Kirk's shocking death, and has begun throwing tantrums and acting with unpredictable aggression.

"There's a manic quality about him," an unnamed source told the outlet in late September. "Or, let me rephrase, an even more manic quality, which is really saying something." This behavior apparently includes Hegseth uncontrollably fidgeting and pacing during meetings, making it look like he's "crawling out of his skin" with nervous energy.

Hegseth also reportedly led a charge to hunt for anyone working in the Pentagon or members of the military who posted negative opinions or critical remarks about Kirk in the wake of his murder. Hegseth himself even took to X (formerly Twitter) to assure people that they were actively investigating anyone who was critical of Kirk on social media. "We are tracking all these very closely and will address, immediately," Hegseth tweeted. "Completely unacceptable." Hegseth and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also called for members of the public to report posts that seemed unsympathetic towards Kirk, which many apparently did. It is believed that posts that weren't kind to Kirk may have led to numerous people losing their jobs in the days that followed.