House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Sunday tried to refute the idea that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was afraid of the Pentagon press corps that he recently helped evict from the complex — by equating transparency with delivering prepared remarks.
“This Week” host Jonathan Karl pressed Johnson about the Pentagon’s revised press guidelines, which forced journalists to acknowledge they would not try to “solicit” unauthorized information from military officials when accepting their credentials. The Pentagon press corps rebuked the guidelines, and nearly all outlets turned their credentials in on Wednesday (save for the far-right outlet One America News and some international outlets).
“Do you have a sense for why the secretary of Defense seems to be afraid to interact with journalists who cover him?” Karl asked Johnson.
Johnson tried to shut the exchange down, saying he rejected Karl’s line of questioning while claiming that “fear is not part of the Secretary of War’s make-up.”
Karl reminded Johnson that Hegseth has only held two briefings since his confirmation, but Johnson remained committed to his defense of Hegseth’s minimal press engagement.
“He’s very transparent,” Johnson said. “I can’t remember, and I don’t think you can either, a secretary of defense who has been so transparent, out in the open, talking about priorities, principles and things.”
“I can,” Karl said. “I covered the building. I traveled around the world with Secretaries of Defense. I interviewed them. I questioned them in the Briefing Room. Other reporters did as well. That doesn’t happen with this one.”
Johnson again invoked Hegseth’s public speeches, asking if former defense secretaries sought to be “everywhere all the time among the troops?”
The House Speaker’s defense mirrored those from other government officials since the Pentagon’s press policies went into effect last week. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said media outlets were having a “full blown meltdown” over the restrictions, claiming they were not anything unusual, and President Donald Trump defended Hegseth last week.
“I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” Trump told reporters during a meeting at the White House alongside Hegseth. “The press is very dishonest.”
