


Colin Carroll, the deputy defense secretary’s former chief of staff who was fired weeks ago, characterized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as being unpredictable in meetings and switching between well-mannered and “agitated.”
Carroll was fired along with senior Hegseth adviser Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick due to allegations that the trio leaked information to the media. On Saturday, he sat down with Megyn Kelly for an interview about the secretary.
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Carroll complimented Hegseth’s performance in a meeting with the House Freedom Caucus about spending cuts, saying, “There is not a secretary in living memory that could have done as good a job with those guys. He was informal. He was super direct. He was very transparent.”
He then recalled Hegseth’s allegedly different behavior in internal meetings, saying he would raise his voice, focus on “weird details,” and become “very agitated.”
Some of the fixation on small stories has become public, such as when Hegseth’s team faced backlash last week over alleged changes to the green room, with CBS News reporting that Hegseth ordered the space to be retrofitted into a “makeup studio” for television appearances. Despite other major stories happening that day, including news that Hegseth shared details of a military operation in another private chat featuring his wife, as well as a campaign in Yemen, his team continued to post about the makeup studio all afternoon.
“So it’s like a tale of two Petes,” Carroll told Kelly.
PETE HEGSETH SIGNAL GROUP CHAT (PART 2): WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Carroll’s interview with Kelly comes days after reports were published about officials close to Hegseth calling the defense secretary’s behavior “erratic” and saying that he yells at staff, according to NBC News. The officials also shared that Hegseth has become more “insecure” about the status of his job after recent controversies, though President Donald Trump has repeatedly backed Hegseth.
Caldwell, another fired official, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, on which he denied claims that he leaked sensitive information to the press and blamed his firing on his disagreement with Hegseth over the handling of Iran.