STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
John Ullyot has been listening to Tom with us and was also listening to Secretary Hegseth earlier. Ullyot is a longtime government spokesman in many roles, including in the White House during the first Trump administration. And he served briefly under Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon. He's since been a critic of the administration. Welcome back.
JOHN ULLYOT: Thanks very much, Tom.
INSKEEP: I just want to hear a little bit more of the defense secretary first.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PETE HEGSETH: For the first time in American history, a cabinet secretary overseeing America's military is being attacked not for losing conflicts with our enemies, but for winning them.
INSKEEP: What do you make of that argument that Hegseth is under attack for winning?
ULLYOT: Well, I think, first of all, this shows, if you take a step back about his bombastic approach that Tom Bowman was talking about, is that Secretary Hegseth always, when he's attacked, he hides behind the troops. And he says, well, this is an attack on the troops. This is an attack on the president. In that news conference, Tom - in that news conference, Steve, as Tom said, is that he's playing to an audience of one, and that's the president. He's looking into the camera, he's talking over the heads of reporters, and he is trying to impress the one person who controls his fate, which is the president.
And as we've said before in our segment before the news conference, is that my view and the view of many others is that the president actually deserves better than this, especially going into the last two years of his presidency when, unlike the previous two years, there's actually going to be robust oversight of the secretary and of the Department of Defense. So the question is, in my view, the president deserves better than that because he is - because he can do better than having a bombastic secretary of defense for the next two years.
INSKEEP: Let's talk that through. And, of course, you've just used the title of a book that's out today - happens to be authored by you - "The President Deserves Better." And you talk about this in a number of aspects. But it seems the president is very happy. We heard Leila quote him saying that Hegseth did an A-plus-plus-plus. I have to pause for a moment and note we're getting into the holiday season. People see the movie "Christmas Story," where the kid fantasizes about getting an A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus. It's a fantasy. Pete Hegseth really got that grade from the president. You're saying the president is not being well served?
ULLYOT: Well, the president is not well served because his aides need to tell him - and now it's probably up to Stephen Miller, who is his new chief of staff. And Stephen Miller has a reputation of also being a fire-breather, not quite as much as Pete Hegseth. But he's in a new role now, Stephen Miller. And he's got to tell the president, how can you advance your agenda? How can you get things done in the final two years? Is it with somebody who's going to be investigated top to bottom, if he's not impeached? And is it somebody who takes that bombastic approach?
If you just - I mean, that was amazing, that news conference, because once again, he has this tone as if he's still on Fox News as a fire-breathing weekend cohost. And this is something that served him very well when he was at Fox News, in terms of becoming - moving up the ladder from just a correspondent to actually a cohost. And, look, he took that same attitude, even though Tom Bowman points out that he was confirmed by the slimmest of slim margins, 50-50, and then the vice president having to break the tie. And you'd think that somebody would come in there, after having that near-death experience for confirmation, and say, look, how can I pivot?
What was it about my - I know he had a lot of personal baggage. But what can I do to just lower the temperature and have it not be about me? When he was at Fox News, it was good to have it about him and to be shouting into the microphone. And here, as we saw from this news conference today, that's a carbon copy from what he did whenever he gets out, because he only gets out - and he fenced off the press from the Pentagon.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
ULLYOT: First secretary who did that. And why doesn't he lower the temperature? That would be better. The president would be better served with that.
INSKEEP: I think you're telling me, as someone who served in the Trump administration, who's conservative, who's Republican, you're saying that even if Hegseth believes he is innocent, that the wise, the practical thing to do would be to get out of the way?
ULLYOT: Yes, absolutely. I think that if you're truly loyal to the president, as so many of us are - I was with him as a senior adviser on his 2016 campaign and all the way through his first term and a little bit of this term. You have to say, if you're truly loyal to the president and you become an issue, you become a target, then you should step out of the way because you're becoming baggage to the president. And he doesn't need that, especially going into the second term. I would argue that he didn't need that in most of the - sorry, last two years.
I'd argue that he didn't need that in the last two years as well. I think he could've seen what was going on. He was very much - and I wrote about this in an op-ed, that the president was very much about accountability in the first term. He dismissed Tillerson. He dismissed...
INSKEEP: Lots of firings. Sure.
ULLYOT: Lots of firings after just one year. Whereas this is somebody who's been a real liability in terms of having a lot of baggage, being too bombastic, when the military is used to having very low-profile people, like Robert Gates, who's one of the most successful...
INSKEEP: Oh, yeah. We talked about...
ULLYOT: ...Secretaries. Exactly.
INSKEEP: We talked about this earlier in the morning, that President George W. Bush, facing a controversial war, got rid of his defense secretary, who resigned, Rumsfeld, and was replaced by Gates, a more bipartisan figure. Now, I want to take seriously, though, this suggestion that you mentioned, Hegseth saying, if you come after me, you're coming after the troops; if I broke the law, the troops broke the law; if I committed war crimes, the troops committed war crimes. Let's just look at that for a moment. Do you believe that is accurate? If, as Thomas Massie says, this is an illegal war waged without proper authority from Congress, is everybody in the military guilty of a crime?
ULLYOT: No. That's obviously a bogus accusation there because the troops are following lawful orders, or what they believe are lawful orders. And they're told by their commanders. And so nobody's going to be going after the troops or military. What the focus is here is on Secretary Hegseth, who's been, once again, a very divisive figure and has not, in my view, served the president well. But there are two particular actions that he took that possibly are criminal. One is sharing classified information with his wife over Signal. And she had no clearance whatsoever. By the way, that is exactly what John Bolton is being prosecuted by this Justice Department for doing.
INSKEEP: Former national security adviser. Yeah.
ULLYOT: Yeah, absolutely. And also, Petraeus did the same thing.
INSKEEP: David Petraeus, yeah.
ULLYOT: And he resigned. He was CIA director. And he resigned once it came to light that he shared classified information with somebody who wasn't authorized. So that's No. 1. No. 2 is this double-tap strike that he reportedly ordered personally, which is something where that's a violation of the laws of war. If you have somebody who surrenders and is essentially...
INSKEEP: This is a second strike on a boat...
ULLYOT: Second strike. And he apparently, reportedly, he ordered...
INSKEEP: ...That had already been disabled or sunk...
ULLYOT: He said, take them out, take them out right now. That is something that is absolutely a war crime and could be prosecuted. And then there are a bunch of other things. There's policy disagreements and everything else.
INSKEEP: And the crime lies at his level...
ULLYOT: Yeah. Nobody's going after...
INSKEEP: ...Not at the level of some corporal somewhere?
ULLYOT: Because he was the one who ordered that strike. Nobody's going after the people who pulled the trigger on that double strike because they were instructed, reportedly personally, by the secretary.
INSKEEP: John Ullyot, senior Pentagon spokesman under Pete Hegseth and holder of other government positions, and author of "The President Deserves Better." Thanks for coming by.
ULLYOT: Thank you, Steve.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROY MARKSON'S "EVERYTHING IN IT'S RIGHT PLACE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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