John Ullyot, who resigned as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson in April 2025, saying at the time that the Defense Department was in “total disarray” under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, predicted this week that it is only a matter of time before his former boss is impeached.
Ullyot explained to CNN’s Erin Burnett why he believes Hegseth, who avoided his possible impeachment progressing this week thanks to Democratic lawmaker no-shows, was never suited to the role in the first place, arguing that Donald Trump just doesn’t realize “how much of a drag” the defense secretary is on himself and his entire administration.
He also suggested that many of the military successes for which Hegseth has taken credit would have happened regardless of who was leading the Pentagon, and called him a “Fox News fire breather.”
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Ullyot’s new book, “The President Deserves Better,” according to its promotional blurb, “traces the downward spiral of Secretaries from the two largest Cabinet departments ― Pete Hegseth at Defense and David Shulkin at Veterans Affairs ― who placed their own priorities above those of the President.”
Ullyot said Hegseth, during a news conference fighting against impeachment this week, “looked like a Fox News fire breather, frankly, or a cable news fire breather who is trying to get a point across.”
“So he’s essentially somebody who is, he makes it about himself, not about the troops,” Ullyot said. “He actually likes … to have the focus on him.”
“It’s as if he’s on a set of Fox News. And what I’ve said and what I say in the book is that the president deserves better than that,” he added.
Hegseth, a former Fox News co-host, was confirmed by the Senate only after Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.
“If I’m somebody like that and I’m getting in there and it’s such a thin margin, then when I get in office, I would pivot from being a Fox News co-host and instead focus on bringing the volume down, just figuring it out, talking to people and not making it about yourself,” said Ullyot.
Trump has “got two more years to go,” he noted, arguing that the president “doesn’t need this headache” of Hegseth.
Ullyot, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and has repeatedly sounded the alarm about Hegseth’s leadership of the Pentagon, said the secretary has just “built a career as a bombastic guy on Fox News” who “likes to throw bombs” and suggested he should have told Trump from the outset that he was “not the unifying figure you need.”