CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten on Wednesday stressed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been a “problem” for President Donald Trump as the former Fox News host wades through infighting and chaos at the Pentagon.
“The bottom line is that Pete Hegseth is a headache for Donald Trump, a headache that, personally, I don’t think he needs … and he is potentially dragging Donald Trump down,” Enten told CNN’s Sara Sidner.
Hegseth, in addition to dealing with a second Signal chat scandal involving sensitive military information he shared with his wife and his brother, has seen the departure of his top spokesperson and fired three aides for reasons they claimed weren’t immediately clear.
On Wednesday, in a speech at Pennsylvania’s U.S. Army War College, Hegseth dismissed critics of his leadership.
“The media likes to call it chaos,” he said. “We call it overdue.”
Trump, whose job approval rating continues to sink following his chaotic tariffs rollout earlier this month, praised Hegseth for doing what he described as a “great job” on Monday.
While Trump’s net favorability rating is “not so hot but not terrible” at -5 points, Enten emphasized that Hegseth’s rating is “way underwater” at -14 points, according to the data analyst’s aggregate.
Enten added that Hegseth is “so much more unpopular” than you’d expect from the average presidential cabinet member and, in Trump’s case, he’s the “least liked” among those in the president’s administration.
“In fact, he’s the least liked secretary of defense,” revealed Enten, who noted that you’d have to go back to Donald Rumsfeld — who played a key role in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during George W. Bush’s administration — to find a secretary defense liked less than how much Hegseth at the moment.
Enten then turned to a CBS News/YouGov poll from March where 76% of respondents — 56% of whom were Republicans — indicated that it’s not appropriate to use the third-party messaging app to discuss military plans.