Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
Last night on Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to examine Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s role and influence in the Trump administration, and what his leadership may reveal about how he’s trying to reshape the U.S. military.
Over time, there has been “a tradition where defense secretaries attempt to minimize their overtly partisan behavior,” Missy Ryan, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said last night. “Because they are the safeguards of America’s sons and daughters, they try to, in the name of national security, act more as a nonpartisan actor.” But Hegseth, she argued, “has totally discarded that tradition, and we’re seeing him lean into his role as a partisan fighter.”
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Helene Cooper, a national-security correspondent at The New York Times; Jonathan Karl, the chief Washington correspondent at ABC News; Ryan; Vivian Salama, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here.
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