A phrase has reportedly been circulating inside the Pentagon as staffers struggle to make sense of decisions they describe as increasingly difficult to explain.
“Because I said so” — a line attributed to Pete Hegseth and reportedly ridiculed within the building — has come to symbolize, for critics, the leadership approach of a defense secretary they describe as deeply self-assured. Sources who spoke to the Daily Mail said Hegseth has firmly rejected outside input on a series of firings, policy shifts and public claims that have unsettled parts of the Defense Department.
The insiders said they welcomed this month’s fragile ceasefire in the Iran conflict, which they described as unpopular among many inside the Pentagon as well as among critics outside the department.
Even so, they said they worry Hegseth could use the pause to intensify what they view as an internal campaign at the department — not only targeting what he has characterized as liberal “wokeness” in the military, but also removing senior officers whom they say command greater credibility and respect.
“Expertise, intelligence, lessons learned, data are out the window,” one Army officer told the outlet.
A civilian official offered a similar assessment, saying: “He lets politics and ego inform his decisions. It’s always just ‘because I said so’ with Pete — no input, no ‘let’s talk this through,’ just his way or the highway because he said so.”
Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez rejected the criticism in an email Thursday, writing: “This is a stupid, false claim.”
The Daily Mail said it spoke this week with four Defense Department insiders following multiple reports that Hegseth had pushed out Gen. Chris “CD” Donahue, who led Army forces in Africa and Europe.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been accused by Pentagon insiders of fostering a ‘because I said so’ culture and crushing morale
Hegseth visited troops in the Middle East in May. Inside sources tell the Daily Mail they believe repeated leadership shake-ups have left troops uncertain about the future direction of the military
Donahue is a decorated officer who commanded the Army’s elite Delta Force and is known as the last American soldier out of Afghanistan.
He was one of the Army’s rising stars, widely expected to someday serve as Army chief of staff or even chairman of the military’s joint chiefs.
‘It’s a gut punch, terrible for morale,’ one of our sources, who has worked with Donahue, said of his ouster.
‘CD’s a true warrior, the leader Hegseth could only dream of being … His record’s a train wreck and everybody knows that,’ he added, referring to the allegations of alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct and mismanagement lobbed at the former Fox News Host during contentious confirmation hearings in the Senate, which approved his appointment by a narrow 51-50 vote. Hegseth denied the allegations.
The Defense Department disputes reports that Donahue was fired or removed by Hegseth, writing in an email to the Daily Mail: ‘General Donahue made the decision to retire on his own.’
High-level military generals are rarely demoted or fired. It is customary for them to instead be forced to retire. That’s what happened with most of the top brass Hegseth has purged. Although Hegseth’s office has framed their departures as retirements, there is little dispute that they were in fact ousted.
Donahue’s departure follows that of General Randy George, the Army chief of staff whom Hegseth forced out this spring after repeated clashes, including over the secretary’s decision to block the promotions of four Army officers.
George oversaw rebuilding the Army’s arsenal of missiles and artillery, which has been stripped down during the Iran war, and was actively working to move equipment to protect US forces to the Middle East when sacked in April.
Aside from their dust-ups about officer promotions, our sources say Hegseth blamed George for a scathing, often-cited report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) saying the US drew down so many munitions in Iran that it has left its military vulnerable in other regions, including Asia.
Army General Christopher ‘CD’ Donahue, who was widely regarded as one of the military’s rising stars, recently retired
Hegseth said Donahue’s decision to leave was his own, but insiders say his departure has dealt a blow to morale. He is pictured speaking in Latvia in May
Contradicting his own previous testimony before Congress acknowledging that it could take ‘months and years’ to replenish the stockpile, Hegseth went on to downplay munitions concerns as ‘foolishly and unhelpfully overstated,’ calling the issue a ‘manufactured story that the media wants to peddle’.
In his year and a half running the department, Hegseth also has sidelined more than a dozen other generals or admirals, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. C.Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Air Force Vice Chief Gen. Jim Slife.
He later removed Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt General Jeffrey Kruse, Naval Special Warfare commander Rear Admiral Milton Sands, and Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin, as well as Major General William Green Jr, the Army’s head chaplain during a time of war.
He has given no rationale for their departures and it seems to have affected his standing with the public.
A new Daily Mail poll shows Hegseth at the bottom of a list of eight well-known members of the Trump Cabinet with him nine points below water. Secretary of State Marco Rubio topped the list four points above, followed by treasury secretary Scott Bessent and homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Others in the poll in order of their approval were FBI director Kash Patel, vice-president JD Vance, health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.
Hegseth has, in many cases, replaced those he ousted with officers perceived by our sources to have been picked because they’ve been loyalists to President Donald Trump, critical of the previous administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and not inclined to question or challenge the secretary.
‘He’s subbed in a bunch of yes-men to high-responsibility roles. I mean real brown noses, you know the type,’ one of our sources told us.
He noted that the string of unexplained dismissals has been not just personally demoralizing for those who’ve lost jobs, but also confusing for the military personnel who worked under them.
‘You see exemplary leaders, people with stellar careers who’ve done everything right, and wonder why that gets punished rather than rewarded,’ he said.
A new Daily Mail poll shows Hegseth with the worst approval rating of eight members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George was forced out earlier this year after clashing with Hegseth
The nation’s conflict with Iran has been as unpopular in the building as outside it, sources say
‘Wholesale s**t-canning of our top people without cause has destabilized hundreds of thousands’ of troops,’ another added.
Five former defense secretaries – including Trump’s own first Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis – sent Congress a joint letter in 2025 calling the firings ‘reckless’ and asking for hearings, which Republican leadership still hasn’t scheduled nearly a year and a half later.
Hegseth has been on Capitol Hill this week pitching his case for Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget.
It marks more than a 40% increase over this year’s budget and more than the combined military budgets of the 34 next highest-spending countries.
Three of the sources we spoke with told us that Pentagon personnel take the greatest exception with plans to spend roughly $1 billion for the ‘Golden Fleet’ of Trump-class battleships that military experts say became obsolete decades ago because of changes in how wars are now fought.
They said Hegseth and Trump have also ignored warnings from experts in the department about cost-benefit analyses of developing a Golden Dome missile-defense system, the dangers of using autonomous, artificial intelligence for military purposes and downsides of impetuous military decisions such as Trump abruptly ordering 5,000 troops to be pulled from Germany in May following friction with Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war.
They likened Hegseth’s apparent inability to talk Trump out of poor military decisions to the culture Hegseth has created within the Pentagon: ‘Get along to go along, and keep your mouth shut.’
Sources have described Hegseth’s apparent inability to talk Trump out of poor military decisions as a ‘get along to go along’ approach
Our sources also slammed Hegseth’s anti-diversity agenda – shutting down DEI programs in the military, cutting ties with Harvard and pressuring the Boy Scouts over DEI issues – as overtly politicizing of the military.
And they spoke of incessant grumbling within the Defense Department about Hegseth flip-flopping on issues, having to walk back assertions that contradict facts on the ground.
Right after the US strikes on Iran in June 2025, for example, he declared: ‘Based on everything we have seen – and I’ve seen it all – our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,’ and dismissed any contrary assessment as speculation.
Months later, to justify this year’s broader war, he said Trump couldn’t abide Iran moving ‘closer and closer to obtaining nuclear capabilities’.
Insiders speak with particular ire about Hegseth’s description of a drone attack that killed six US service members and wounded about 30 others on a US base in Kuwait in March.
He framed it as a ‘squirter’ attack in which a missile ‘squeaked’ through to hit a ‘tactical operations center that was fortified.’
Survivors later contradicted his account, saying the center was virtually unprotected. Hegseth dodged questions about whether the soldiers on the base at the time were lying.
‘The Secretary’s description remains correct,’ Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in an emailed statement.
One of our sources described Hegseth’s comments on the attack as ‘the single most insulting and corrosive move’ he has seen by a defense secretary in his career.
Another spoke of widespread fear among Pentagon personnel of questioning Hegseth’s ‘Because I said so’ stances.
‘He’s created his own alternative reality,’ he said. ‘And God help us. God help us all.’
