Larry Wilson: The vanity of the secretary of war

Pete Hegseth, a man so eminently qualified to be secretary of defense, or perhaps of war, that he is only the second presidential cabinet member in history whose Senate confirmation required a tie-breaking vote from the vice president, is a complicated person. On one hand, a good boy, a pleaser: high school valedictorian, a church-goer, hard-working point guard setting records for three-point shots, admitted to Princeton as an undergrad and then Harvard for grad school in public policy. The definition of Establishment-loving Midwestern success.

But then he doesn't want to be seen as that good boy: covers his body in tattoos, quits his Wall Street job to serve in the Army in Iraq, develops a nasty drinking problem, fights off legal charges of sexual assault, marries three times before he's 40. He goes to church, yes, but it's the kind of church whose pastor calls for the repeal of women's right to vote and whose founder says that homosexuality should be a crime. That Harvard master's degree?

He sent his copy of it back to the school, mad about DEI on campus. His attitude toward women in the military - doesn't want them in the ranks - and the fact that several of those tattoos reference the Christian Crusades against Islam taken together mean that a fair-minded, egalitarian American can't believe that such a person is in charge of our military, especially as it goes to what he apparently sees as some kind of holy war against a leading Muslim nation. Oh, and he hates the press and so misunderstands our mission that he banned all journalists from the Pentagon if their editors wouldn't sign an agreement to not report anything that wasn't the subject of an approved military press release.

Every single news outlet, left, right and center, that reported from that headquarters of the United States military refused to sign that paperwork with the exception of the bonkers One America News Network, a propaganda site. So for the first time in its history, no one is regularly reporting on the Pentagon, except when called in for a press briefing. But here's what really bugs me about Pete Hegseth's attitude toward the media: It turns out to be based on simple vanity, the least attractive of the sins.

Because this month he banned photographers from attending those press briefings after several news outlets published photos of the defense secretary that he himself considered "unflattering," according to at least two members of Hegseth's staff. His comms person is pretending that the ban has to do with a lack of space in the briefing room, which is untrue. It's because Hegseth didn't like the way the published pictures made him look.

Bit cranky, is the way he appeared. Because in the last press briefing on his and the president's war on Iran in which photogs were allowed, his face got all twisted up: "

To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘endless wars,' stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless," Hegseth said during the presser. ”

Our generation knows better and so does this president." I guess this war isn't quite endless, yet, but it sure is going on a lot longer than Hegseth and his boss thought that it would. Hegseth then "called out NBC for asking a ‘gotcha-type question' when pressed about the timeline of the ongoing war; he later criticized another reporter's question about whether the U.S. planned to put boots on the ground," reports the Independent.

The defense secretary then truly showed his defensive side by snapping back to another reporter's inquiry about preventing this conflict from spiraling with: "

Did you not hear my remarks?" A year ago, Hegseth almost lost his job right after he got it by capriciously sharing military plans with a Signal chat group so large it included the editor of The Atlantic. The president, thin-skinned as well, is hardly going to fire him now for being vain. But in church this Sunday, the secretary might consider picking up his Bible and turning to Ecclesiastes: "

Then I considered all that my hands had done … behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind." Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com. Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency.