Breaking News from Pod Save America - New Report Reveals Embarrassing Details About Pete Hegseth

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

The New York Times reports that Pete Hegseth’s wife has become one of his most influential advisers at the Pentagon - sitting in sensitive meetings, interviewing staff and shaping his public image. Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben, the New York Times has a big story out this week about the very bizarre role that Secretary Defense Pete Hegseth's wife is playing at the Pentagon. We're going to walk you through some of the big details. This was the most jaw-dropping part of the story to me. Last year, she, Mrs. Hegseth, was in a highly sensitive meeting with her husband and top British defense officials after the United States temporarily stopped sharing military intelligence with Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal first reported. In a previously undisclosed part of that meeting, a Trump administration official told the New York Times, the British indicated they had officers on the ground in Ukraine and without U.S. intelligence early, including early warnings of incoming missiles from Russia,

the officers' lives were at risk. The British spoke in general terms, the official said, because the presence of Mrs. Hexeth made them uneasy. Later, they had a smaller meeting without her to go into detail. So just for those of you, keep in score at home, the Brits were so worried about this information leaking that they didn't raise it in a meeting with the sec-deaf because his wife was there, but then the Trump administration... Somebody leaked it. That's like one of the best little side details. Chef's case said these stories, yes.

The Pentagon also, they refuse to say if Mrs. Hegsef has a security clearance. Here's one other crazy line then. I'll turn it over to you. One person familiar with Mr. Hexas thinking said that the defense secretary likes his wife to travel with him to keep him out of trouble. Mr. Hexath, who has a history of heavy drinking, has himself made clear he needs his wife at his side. He often credits the two Js.

Jennifer and Jesus with transforming his life. Very reassuring to know the Secretary of Defense can't stay sober or keep his dick in his pants and let his wife is kind of glued to his side. By the way, if you want to hear from national security nerds, who can stay sober and can keep it in their pants? Please subscribe to the POTSave the World here on YouTube. We're trying to build progressive counterweight. My J's Jalen Brunson, though.

A lot more weird stuff in this article, Ben, but I'll just pause there. What the hell do you make of this? You know, it's a story that, like a lot of these Trump stories, is tragicomic, but actually important because it speaks to some of the systemic problems in the second Trump administration. First of all, as that anecdote in the Times story illustrates, it's just bizarre to, it's unnerving to foreign partners to have random people without security clearances that they don't really know much about and have no official role in meetings. But beyond that, it speaks to, number one, the personalization of how they look at power. I was in a deputy national security advisor role for a long time, worked with people who were secretaries of defense and state, as did you. And what you were very aware of is it was an office.

Like you were a temporary employee. You were lucky to be there, a privilege to be there. HECF and a lot of these Trump guys, it's like they see themselves as like royalty in these positions. It's actually a very royal thing. They bring your spouse to everything and they're in the meetings. That's just that's not how it works. I, in all my years, eight years in the White House, I don't remember anybody's spouse, man or woman, just deciding to be in a situation or meeting or in a foreign bilateral meeting.

you know, that's not something that, you know, Susan Rice's wonderful husband, Ian, great guy. I saw Ian socially or I saw the holiday parties. Yeah, Bill Clinton wasn't popping into meetings. Occasionally he would be asked to do something. Yeah, yeah. So it's just, it's not what happens and it kind of speaks to the kind of personalization of how they view these offices. It also speaks to the fact that they, you know, particularly a guy like Hegstatt, there's so inexperienced that he has no way of knowing.

or caring, like, how, like, the normal order of business goes or what the expectations might be for a foreign country. And, and again, it's kind of a fantasy camp. You know, I get to go to Asia. I'm going to bring my wife along. It's very much like Cash Patel in some ways. Yeah. You know, wanting to go to the UK.

Poor Brits, by the way. They've had to go like, what was it? Soccer games. It was a soccer game. It wasn't like kite surfing. No, it was like a sea-do thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, jet skiing.

These guys are living, like, fantasy camp in the most important jobs in the world. Secretary of Defense, FBI. So the lack of seriousness, the ego involved. And then part of the window into his personality, look, his Jays work for him, that's great. But it kind of feels like if your secretary of defense or war, for that matter, kind of can't stare at four walls in a hotel room by himself. I mean, to be serious about it for a second, like, that's kind of weird because we all know what that's like. Yeah, like I travel a lot, as viewers know. Like, if I couldn't make it through the night in hotel room, I probably shouldn't be the secretary of defense.

Without being blacked out. And like foreign intel agencies will know that and throw, you know, sort of assets at you and try to make you make bad decisions. Yeah, the point about the kind of personalization of politics and like making the family affair is well taken. Because like you get the Trump boys, buying drone companies, you got Lindsay. Graham, they're trying to hand his Senate seat to his sister, even though she has no fucking idea what she's talking about. I think the core point you're making is the important one, though. It's like if the Secretary of Defense's spouse or any cabinet secretary's spouse wants to support

the troops, do like public events, you know, support her husband in some way, that's fine. But you either work in national security or you don't. And if you do, you have a security clearance. You have a defined role. There is accountability. And what we're learning in this story is, you know, she's just like popping up in meetings with a foreign counterpart. And like for the Brits, disclosing you have boots on the ground in a country like Ukraine. Like that's about as sensitive a thing as you're going to talk about.

It's like that and like sources and method stuff. Like who is spying for you? So you can't just do that. You can't just have your spouse on the signal chat. Remember she was on the signal gate chat about where we were going to bomb in Yemen to take up the Houthis. You can't have your spouse directing the Pentagon staff to like make content. There's stuff in this article about how she was telling the Pentagon staff, like, what videos to post when of Pete's remarks, that she was, like, overseeing press and media affairs, that she was conspiring with the team about how to bar reporters from the Pentagon, like, press briefing room. It's fucking weird, man.

It's really weird. It's insane. And, you know, we're allowed to do this every now and then. In any other administration would be... Michelle Obama would get killed. An absolute nuclear bomb of a scandal. And this one, it's like, oh, I guess Hexeth has a. his wife there.

And we should also... Did you see she the daughter of a Lockheed Martin executive? Well, that's perfect. Just a weird sidebar. Well, because the other thing is because she was getting involved in things like interviewing people

for positions. This stuff, too, it filters down in the Pentagon and in the military and makes people kind of resentful. And look, it's not like the service members on the Abraham Lincoln

can bring their spouses along. You know, like there's a discrepancy. There's a discrepancy. set of rules. You know, it's interesting when I'll never forget, remember when Stanley McChrystal, the commanding general in Afghanistan, Obama fired him because he and his staff did a bunch of interviews with a Rolling Stone reporter in which they kind of got drunk and they talked trash on everybody else in the administration, basically. I'll never forget, because Stanley McChrystal is a good guy, you know, and Obama liked him.

But Doug Lute, who was working in the White House at the time, had been a general in the Army. I remember him saying to me in one of those hallway conversations when this was blowing up, he's going to have to fire him a crystal. And Lute wasn't happy about it either. Because the way the chain of command works is if you expect certain behavior out of everybody down the chain of command, you have to model that. And basically, if any colonel did what McChrystal did, they would get discharged. And think about this. Again, like, these guys are setting an example where no rules apply to them.

I can have my spouse in the meeting. I can have my spouse, like, you know, interviewing people for jobs. And that's just not something that anybody else in the entire apparatus of the United States military or Pentagon could do. And that's wrong. Rules for thee and not for me. And, look, for what it's worth, infidelity in the military, can be punished. And I think that Pete's wife was married with three kids when she met Pete. He was on his second marriage at the time and also had three kids. Now, this is his third marriage.

So they're not modeling a lot of great behavior. Apparently now they've found God or something. No, now they're the paragon's of virtue. Yeah, yeah. And meritocracy. Pod Save America breaking news is brought to you by ZipRecruiter with everyday interactions becoming increasingly impersonal. Someone going just one extra step can be huge. Like when my doctor takes the time to call me with test results instead of sending them electronically. They came back positive for gay. It makes me feel like a human being again. If you're hiring, great candidates can also go the extra step and tell you why they're interested in your job on ZipRecruiter as a way to stand out from others in the pool. And ZipRecruiter has a new feature

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Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Okay. Another big story this week is that Prince Harry and Megan Markle are moving back to London, then as a royal correspondence on this show, as long-time listeners know. The New York Times said the move caught even King Charles by surprise. This move just comes just six years after they left Britain for the U.S. They were living near us up in Montecito. And also it comes 15 months after Harry said he couldn't, quote, see a world in which I would be

bringing my wife and children back to the UK. So something changed in the last year or so. For now, they are apparently staying as private individuals. They're not going back to being royals. I don't know if going back to being a royal is a thing that one could do. But also this week, Ben, we learned that Prince Harry and six other high profile people were ordered to pay $13 million to the publisher of the Daily Mail after they lost a court case to this sort of holding company.

The case was about the phone hacking scandal and the judge in London ordered Harry and these other folks to pay the company's legal fees in the case, and apparently the total cost of those legal fees could be up to $47 million. So this is quite a hit. The tabloids are all saying

that money's the reason for the move. We don't really know. Harry kind of does philanthropy full-time. Megan has this lifestyle brand. They made a killing off of books. Remember Spare was sold like and Netflix. Netflix. Yeah, they had a Netflix deal that was reportedly $60 million. A lot of that was for overhead.

There was a Spotify deal for $25 million that resulted in 12 episodes of a podcast with Megan Markle. And Bill Simmons called her a grifter after remember that? I hate to pick on that, but that was the worst podcast I've ever heard in my life. Good for you for trying to listen to it. The New York Post reported that Megan wanted to get appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Kamala Harris when she became vice president. You didn't see this? I missed this. So I read this story.

I was skeptical of it. Then I made some calls, and now I'm a lot less skeptical of it. Wow. But it was probably unconstitutional to make a British royal, a U.S. senator. Because Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the founding document says, quote, no person holding any office a profit or trust shall without consent of Congress except any president, a monument office title of any kind, whatever from any king, print, or foreign state. Ben, what's happening here? Why they moved back?

There's, you know, world correspondent in me, there's the money angle. And it's a quite interesting money angle, which is they've lived in the United States for six years. And there's a five-year threshold for UK people that are non-residents, where if you pass that threshold, you are shielded from paying certain capital gains taxes. Really? Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Interesting. all the money they've made here because they waited six years, they don't have to go back and pay capital gains tax. That's interesting. So it's a big tax dive over there. I'm not just sharing information that I've accumulated here that nobody's declared this to be the reason, but there are financial reasons why someone might stay this specific amount of time out of the country before returning. That's one possibility. the other more virtuous possibility is King Charles does have cancer. And these grandchildren of his, Harry and Megan's kids, like, don't really know him that well. And in a recent visit, he seems to be trying to repair the rupture.

Yeah, there's some thawing, right? Yeah, they brought the kids over. Yeah, Harry had tea with his dad in London in 2025, and they brought the kids over, like, last month, I think. And it may be, honestly, too, that things have kind of stabilized, like, a bit of a rocky wrote for the royal family, you know, think of what's happened in those six years. You had the queen die. You had King Charles ascend to the throne. You had the crazy Prince Andrew Epstein Embroglio. Jesus, I forgot about that. You had spare come out and this kind of bitter rivalry, sibling rivalry with William come out. You had Kate get sick as well and kind of be off grid for a time.

So maybe, but things like, it feels like things have settled. Charles is kind of hit his stride. Maybe it's just kind of like, okay, now I'll go back. This case is settled. I think the biggest question I have Tommy is, okay, well, what now? What do you do? They're back there. Yeah, where do you live?

I mean, they've got money so they can afford to live places. There's a big question about his security because he actually had to dust up recently because he's not a rural. He doesn't get certain kind of security. So there's going to be a question of like, is he going to be handed by the press? And is he going to be secure? but just also like what are what are they going to do you know i mean they did that podcast they did that harry and megan doc they did for netflix they did he did his memoir they've kind of mined their

past fully you know um she did some show where she's in like her neighbor's kitchen like kind of in the lifestyle you're making like honey or something yeah yeah making like jams and honey you know um she's no elissa master monica let's just say no elissa can she can make sense Jam. But yeah, I'm just curious what the guy does. I mean, he's been very good on, you know, the one thing he does philanthropically that has really had a life is Invictus games. This is like wounded warriors. Yes, that's really. Support for wounded warriors. And Harry, obviously, was in the military, but be interesting to see like what the next chapter is here. Yeah, I'm interested to watch it too. I mean, there's a couple other political things that I forgot about.

Remember, in September 22, Harry and Megan reportedly asked to ride back on Air Force One after the Queen's funeral in the Biden administration said no. There's another report that they requested like an oval office meeting with Biden in accommodations in the Blair House. That was also declined. I think because the Biden folks didn't want to piss off the king and the queen by like, you know, elevating Megan and Harry. But yeah, I wanted to watch. Weird news was surprised by this one today. But we'll keep tracking it here. Finally this week, Ben, the Trump administration announced more sanctions on members of the international criminal court or ICC. So earlier this year, Trump announced sanctions on nine ICC judges and its chief prosecutor. And then this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio

slapped sanctions on the president of the ICC in one of his top lawyers. Rubio's statement about the sanctions said, quote, the international criminal court is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate. Okay. Listeners are probably wondering, why are we treating an international court like a terrorist organization? Good question. The answer is Israel. Back in November of 2024, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Kalant. The initial executive order by the Trump administration that imposed sanctions on the ICC specifically said that. The ICC has, quote, abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin and Yahoo and former Minister of Defense Yov Kalant. So it's not a conspiracy. It's in the text. Yeah. So what does this mean in practice, Ben? One example is that the U.S. government now going after a 70-year-old Japanese judge named Tamako Akane. She is a very senior and widely respected Japanese judge. She's an outspoken defender of human rights. Her elevation to the head of the ICC is a huge point of pride in Japan. And now the U.S. is going to freeze her assets and deny her entry into the country, I guess. The announcement has been taken. It's like a huge insults in Japan, understandably. And it's another warning sign about the U.S. being an unreliable ally and partner that comes after all the shit we did to South Korea this week. Ben, this is

crazy. This is damaging and crazy. This is one of the stories that needs to get more attention. I'm glad we're able to talk about it here. I'll just focus on like two pieces of this. The first is these are not symbolic sanctions. Like these are sanctions they're going to make these people's lives much more difficult. What are the Canadian judges we sanctioned? said she lost access to her credit cards. Exactly. Amazon, Alexa, stopped responding to her. Because Amazon couldn't work with her.

In the past, there have been these stories of people that have not been able to basically have like a bank account or a credit card. Like, it really can destroy people's lives. At times, it raised questions about whether they could access, like, you know, email addresses. And so fundamentally, what we are doing is we are making it impossible for the international criminal court to function, or at least we're trying. trying to do so, which by definition is taking a sledgehammer to international law and serving as a shield for all war criminals.

I mean, we'll get to Netanyahu in a second here, but if you're crippling the international criminal court, well, they have investigations into Vladimir Putin. Like, we're good with his war crimes now? They've had, you know, war crimes investigations around the world. Are we concerned about the war crimes in Sudan? I mean, we are actively shielding war criminals around the world and just, you know, just destroying the lives of judges and lawyers who just who in some cases are heroes in the countries. Yeah, these are like leading officials in places like Ghana or the Senegal as the other prosecutor who is targeted this week by the U.S.

Like we are creating horrible PR for our entire country because we're undermining the international system of justice in targeting some of the leading individuals in all these places. And here's the thing. about the why that matters. Yes, the Republican Party has long been hostile to the ICC. In the first Trump term, there was even an effort to impose some sanctions related to the fact that the ICC was looking into prosecuting a US war crimes case in Afghanistan.

I didn't think that was the right thing to do at the time. It was at least about US service members. There is no pretense that this is, that case got dropped. Karim Khan actually dropped the investigation into U.S. conduct in Afghanistan. So there's no open investigation into the United States. It is 100% only about Netanyahu. This is, we are on behalf of a foreign government, Israel. We are destroying the international criminal quarter trying to and targeting individuals,

including some individuals who had nothing to do with the. prosecutions of Netanyahu. I mean, I'm not saying it's okay to target the people that did, but it's mind-blowing deference to a foreign government. Look, we wouldn't do this for the United Kingdom. So for people who are like, why do you talk about Israel so much? Because of this kind of crap, this is insane. We're literally going to destroy the entire international order so that Bibi Netanyahu, who's not going to travel probably to ICC signatories anyway, just like we're discrediting his enemies. Like, we're discrediting his enemies. What the fuck is going on here?

It is crazy. And if you look at public opinion polling in the United States, like everyone suggests that a healthy majority of Americans believe that war crimes are committed in Gaza. So it's not like American public opinion is even saying like, hey, we really need to protect, you know, Bibi Nanyahu from these quote unquote false charges. No, like Americans believe he's a war criminal. And it just shows just how distorted everything is. And a few thoughts. Like, first of all, and also, like, the internal Israeli system of accountability is clearly broken. Doesn't exist.

So don't tell me that. For example, there was this horrible drone strike on this World Central Kitchen vehicle a couple of years back that killed a bunch of people that were just trying to provide food to folks in Gaza. I think the Israelis announced this week that they're not going to be doing, prosecuting that case. Because I think they blame World Central Kitchen from hiring some sort of security firm and not telling them about it, as if that's a lot. makes it okay to fucking drone somebody. And I realize that, you know, the U.S. is fucked up and, you know, had drone strike on, you know, peaceful gatherings. There was a wedding. There's funeral. So, like, I understand that the United States made mistakes here. And that's why I think there should be these international systems of accountability. Second, the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome statute.

We're not a party to the ICC. I think that will be something that Democrats in 2028 will be asked to talk about and something we should consider. And there's this sort of the separate case of Karim Khan, who is the chief prosecutor at the ICC, who was on the Nanyahu case, who has voluntarily stepped down in 2025 after allegations of sexual misconduct. He, you know, he has been designated by the U.S. as well. He can't enter the country or his wife for kids. But I think just so folks know, like, that is something you may have read about, but it is distinct from what's happening this week.

The Ghanaian and Senegalese and Japanese, like judges, had nothing to do with that. Right, right. And Japan is a big financial backer of the ICC.C. didn't realize that they had provided one sixth of its budget. So we're just going hard after a international commitment to justice. Yeah, we're punishing. And it's so fucked up because the Japanese are such good international citizens, in part because it's in their DNA because of their history in World War II.

And we're punishing them for wanting to support efforts to prevent war crimes from happening. We want them to learn what, the opposite lessons from World War II, Like, no, you guys should go back to being on the side of the war criminals. I mean, it is astonishing. The last thing I'd say is I do think this is 100% about Israel. Maybe I'd crack that to 99.9 because I think probably also on the back of the heads of some of these Trump people. Trump, they're thinking they're coming for us someday. Yeah.

I mean, the boat strikes we've talked about are actually not war crimes because there's no war there. They're just murder. But, you know, the girls' school that got struck in Iran. in a war where there's no legal basis for the war. So like a potential war crime in an illegal war, they may be trying to get ahead of having to evade international justice for the rest of their lives. Marco Rubio, I don't know.

That's a very good point. The next time Marco Rubio enlist human rights as the pretext for what he's doing to Cubans, just kind of remember this because that guy's full of shit. There is kind of a narrative now. It's driven by the meme of Ruby. doing every job. He's like the only competent capable person.

Like fine. You know, what is it the old saying? Like the one-eyed man and king in the way of the blind, right? But like, don't tell me he's a good guy. Don't tell me he's doing this

for the right reasons because you're right. He's undercutting the entire system of international justice and accountability. And he's trying to starve an entire island full of people in Cuba.

But it's funny to watch them like, you know, dressed like Odysseus on the office couch. All right. That's it for us. today. Thank you for watching this episode of POTSave the World here on YouTube. And please subscribe and talk to you soon.