Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson conducts a press briefing at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2, 2025. Photo: U.S. Navy Officer Eric Brann/Office of the Secretary of War
The welcome was so warm it could’ve been the first day of school for a new class of kindergarteners, and with the so-called reporters’ level of skepticism for the administration, they might as well have been.
“I would also like to take a moment today to welcome all of you here to the Pentagon briefing room as official new members of the Pentagon press corps. We’re glad to have you,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in her December 2 briefing. “This is the beginning of a new era.”
Wilson also said that “legacy media chose to self-deport from this building,” a cute way of noting that dozens of news organizations — among them the New York Times, the Washington Post, the major broadcast news outlets, and even Fox News and Newsmax — gave up their press passes rather than sign on to the administration’s blatantly anti-First Amendment set of rules for reporting on Pete Hegseth’s Department of War. Among those rules was a provision allowing journalists to be expelled for reporting on anything, whether classified or unclassified, not approved for official release.
To test-drive the absurdity of this new “press corps,” Wilson granted the second question of the “new era” to disgraced former congressman Matt Gaetz, once Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general and now a host on the feverishly pro-Trump One America News Network. Gaetz, who was wearing a rather dated performance fleece jacket embroidered with “Representative Matt Gaetz,” asked two questions about regime change in Venezuela, a policy the administration is actively fomenting as it carries out strikes on boats it claims are carrying “narcoterrorists” smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
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The substance of the questions mattered less than the opening they provided for Wilson to parrot the administration’s line on these strikes: “Every single person who we have hit thus far who is in a drug boat carrying narcotics to the United States is a narcoterrorist. Our intelligence has confirmed that.” Somewhat puzzlingly, Wilson also said the Department of War is “a planning organization” with “a contingency plan for everything.”
There was no further follow-up from the member of the “press” whom the House Ethics Committee found engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl in 2017. (Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.)
Since the briefing took place just days after the killing of a member of the National Guard blocks from the White House, multiple members of the Pentagon’s new Fourth Estate asked weighty questions in the wake of the tragedy, including whether the service member would receive a medal for distinguished service or a military burial at Arlington National Cemetery. (Both are TBD.)
It wasn’t all softball questions, but every assembled member served their purpose by running interference for the administration in general and Hegseth in particular. One interlocutor, following up on a question about selling weapons to Qatar despite its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood from the indefatigable Laura Loomer, asked without a hint of irony whether the U.S. would be “reassessing our relationship with Israel” over Israeli media reports that the country’s government “funded Hamas.”
Without missing a beat, the War Department flak replied that that would be a “better question for the State Department” and moved right along.
Another member of the press corps asked whether any actual drugs have been recovered from these alleged drug-smuggling boats that the U.S. military has been drone striking — twice, in one case — a question well worth asking, and one that’s almost certainly being posed by the deposed mainstream journalists now reporting on the Pentagon from outside its walls. Wilson, standing in for the U.S. government, responded by essentially asking that we trust her, trust the intelligence, and trust that Hegseth’s War Department is telling the truth. The matter was, once again, closed.
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Along with Loomer, a noted Trump sycophant and conspiracy theorist, I spotted “Pizzagate” promoter Jack Posobiec, who asked about Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, and Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe in the assembled crowd. In a video of the briefing, an open laptop in one member of the “new” media’s lap was emblazoned with stickers that read “feminine, not feminist” and “homemaking is hot.” A statement from the department trumpeting news of the new corps features an interviewer in front of a backdrop emblazoned with logos for “LindellTV,” the media venture by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell — who is now running for governor of Minnesota. (LindellTV’s IMDB page describes the programming as: “Aging man with many internet connectivity issues, screaming into his cell phone, has discussions with a tired looking news anchor,” although it’s not clear whether that’s the official network tagline.)
The Pentagon press corps has always been a gilded cage — a perch for big-name reporters who want a plush-sounding posting without too much hassle. The most essential, critical reporting never comes from briefings, where reporters sit with their mouths open like baby birds looking up for a news morsel from their press secretary mother. But like with so many things under Trump, by giving up on any semblance of respecting norms, he’s revealed how neutered the institution was to begin with. Critical reporting on the War Department has, and will, continue, even without reporters in the physical building. It’s worth asking if they should ever go back.
The post The Brand-New Pentagon Press Corps Is Gaga for Hegseth appeared first on The Intercept.
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