Author reveals the bond that binds Trump and Pete Hegseth
President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, appear to have a special bond, and one author who has written about Trump for several decades revealed why that is during a new interview.
Hegseth has seemed like a unicorn in the Trump world because he has generated negative press coverage for the administration and has not yet been removed from his job. For instance, Hegseth was at the center of the Signalgate scandal last year, where plans of a U.S. strike against the Houthis in Yemen were leaked to The Atlantic. Hegseth has also found himself in the middle of the Trump administration's lethal strikes against suspected drug boats, which have killed more than 120 people.
But it's not the penchant for violence or the love of television that binds the two men, according to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written four books about Trump. Instead, the fact that they both "know nothing" about their jobs is why they seem to get along so well, Wolff said on a new episode of "Inside Trump's Head," a podcast he co-hosts with Joana Coles of The Daily Beast.
"He doesn't know what he's doing," Wolff said about Trump. "He doesn't know what he doesn't know. He doesn't know how to proceed as soon as anyone raises a complicating detail."
Wolff added that Trump's ignorance of his job is why he gravitates to someone like Hegseth rather than other administration officials with more policy knowledge.
"Which is why he likes Hegseth more than Marco Rubio," Wolff said. "Because Hegseth doesn't know anything either."
"Trump really likes people who know nothing," he added.