Mitch McCann: US correspondent on Donald Trump backing Pete Hegseth after second Signal chat leak

Donald Trump has confirmed he's standing 'strongly' behind Pete Hegseth after reports claim he leaked more military plans.

Hegseth's wife, lawyer and brother were included on a Signal group chat, where he shared detailed plans about an operation against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

This comes one month after a journalist released messages between top US officials after accidentally being added to their group chat.

US correspondent Mitch McCann says Donald Trump has 'dug his heels in' and he's reluctant to let go of Hegseth as US Secretary of Defence. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International correspondence with ends and eye insurance, peace of mind
for New Zealand business. Mitch mccanner's are US correspondent homemtch Hey, Heather,
how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm very well? Thank you? So why is Trump standing
by Pete haig Seth.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
There are a couple of reasons for this. Donald Trump
is really reluctant to fire hig Seth. One reason is
he doesn't want to give the media, I guess, a
scalp or a victory at least how that's how Donald
Trump is reported to see it. He doesn't want the
media to get a win. And the second reason here
is he doesn't want the chaos in firings that plagued
his first term. If you remember Donald Trump's first term

(00:35):
in office, which is hard to forget, it seemed like
a cabinet secretary or a top official was fired every
second day. In fact, in his first term he fired
a national security advisor a top cabinet official after twenty
two days. So by first term standards, pet Higseth is
kind of doing pretty well.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Would Trump not want to get rid of him just
by having a quiet chat to him and asking him
to quit?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
It's difficult at this point, because Donald Trump has said
from the start that he would not want to get
rid of him, or is refusing to get rid of him.
In fact, reporters were in the Oval office yesterday talking
to Donald Trump and he really dunk his heels in
and said he's not going anywhere. In fact, he said,
ask the houthis how he's doing. In fact, it's the
hoofy rebels that he fired those missiles.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
And I mean he was discussed in the signing, you
know what I mean, Mitch, Like, It's one thing to
fire somebody and for it to be seen as a scalp,
but it's quite another thing for Pete Higsseeth to you know,
be talked around to saying, look this I'm becoming a
distraction to the administration, and I am going to stand
down because clearly this guy is a liability.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, well, he does seem very much like liability. The
problem is that if he asked Higgsseeth to resign, it
would be obvious that Donald Trump has asked him to
do so, because he's dug his heels in so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, And so he's gone and booked himself in Fox
News hoping to kind of, you know, get a soft
interview obviously, and get rid of this problem. It's only
made it worse, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, that's right. He was on Fox and Friends this morning,
which is actually what his previous job was before he
was over seeing three million people the Department of Defense.
He thought he was going to get an easy interview,
but it was quite difficult, and the reporting here suggests
that many people are not feeling good about it. They
aren't feeling that he did a good job. In fact,
he really dug in on that interview. It lasted quite

(02:18):
some time, and he says this is a media smear
campaign and that no war plans were shared. But I
think the story isn't going to go anywhere, although the
presidency is as I say that he's not going to
sack him.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Hey, listen, how is this Harvard thing going for Trump?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, this is developing pretty quickly. Harvard University has decided
it's going to sue the Trump administration. It actually sets
the stage for a major court battle between America's oldest
and richest university and the White House. This is because
the government decided to freeze a couple of billion dollars
in funding when Harvard refused to comply with a list

(02:53):
of demands from the White House. What were the demands, Well,
the White House asked Harvard to reduce the power of
students and staff. We'd asked it to report foreign students
who violate the Code of Conduct, and it also asked
Harvard to bring it auditors to ensure that Harvard is
quote viewpoint diverse. I think there the administration is worried

(03:13):
that many of these institutions are too liberal, too left leaning,
and they want to be assured that there are conservatives
on campus. Harvard refused, and now it faces two billion
dollars in funding freezers and it's taking them to court.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, and it sounds like, I mean, you tell me
if this is how you read it. But it sounds
like the Trump administration realizes this is problematic because they
want to talk to Harvard and negotiate, but Harvard is
refusing to negotiate, suggesting that they feel pretty pretty keen
and pretty strongly that they can win.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, that's right. Harvard sees the government is trying to
gain leverage over the university. It says this is part
of a pressure campaign. And I think to your point,
the government thought they might have been in for a
win here because so many other universities, high standard universities, folded.
And one of the questions people have is can't Harvard
They'll be fine, one't they because they have so much money. Yes,
they have a lot of money. They've got fifty three

(04:04):
billion dollars in an endowment. That's when the money gets given. Sorry,
the university gets given money from all sorts of places philanthropy.
But the problem there is that more than eighty percent
of that money is restricted to specific uses, So Harvard
can't just go out and spend fifty million dollars. It's
limited to things like scholarships, libraries, and construction programs pro projects.

(04:26):
So Harvard really does have to fight this.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, Mitch Listen, thanks very much for talking us through
that so much. We can are us correspondent for more
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