Pete Hegseth has been floated as a potential 2028 contender even as he’s accused of misleading the White House and the wider public on the war in Iran.
MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino, 51, claims to have insider knowledge on impressive achievements made by the self-anointed “secretary of war” that he said he could not reveal “legally and for national security reasons.”
But if he could talk about them, he said, everyone would see how great Hegseth is.
Bongino, the former FBI deputy director who stepped down after just 10 months on the job, made the case for the permanently embattled defense secretary seeking office after Hegseth clashed with lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee over the war in Iran earlier this week.
“Having seen from the inside some of the changes he’s implemented at the Pentagon, some of the things are public, some of them are not. I’m not trying to pretend like, you know, hidden knowledge, it’s just things I can’t… I wouldn’t disclose,” he said on a Thursday episode of his eponymous podcast.
He went on to say the unspecified changes are “so profound they’re going to impact our military for the better for years to come. I promise you, I would not make that up.”
Hegseth, among other things, has been accused of alienating Pentagon staff with “middle-school drama” and a “mean girls” atmosphere, lying to President Donald Trump about the situation in Iran, and imposing a hardline religious agenda on the military that has freaked out service members.
But Bongino insists he’s doing “an amazing job.”
“If Pete was doing such a terrible job, how come we minimized -” he said, before quickly catching himself and acknowledging “although [we] had some casualties – but minimized casualties .. we’ve basically met our metrics for what we said we were going to do in Venezuela and Iran, there are other things going on obviously he can’t talk about. And how come recruiting’s through the roof?”
“I’m gonna throw something out there: The Republican political bench is deep. The Democrat bench is total s--t. It’s absolute garbage,” he said. “That’s why I’m not throwing in the towel, ‘We’re gonna lose the midterms, lose the presidential.’ No, I’m not saying that.”
“I think Pete could make a significant run for national office,” he said, putting Hegseth on par with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both of whom are widely seen as likely 2028 presidential contenders.
To make his point, Bongino played a clip of Hegseth boasting about military recruiting numbers, declaring, “This is a data point that’s real.” In another clip, Hegseth melted down at California Democrat John Garamendi for calling the administration’s war with Iran a “quagmire.”
The term sent Hegseth spiraling into a nearly two-minute rant.
“My generation served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan. Years and years of nebulous missions and utopian nation-building that led us to nothing,” he retorted. “The way you stain the troops when you tell them two months in—two months in, congressman—you should know better. Shame on you, calling this a ‘quagmire’ two months in.”
“You call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies. Shame on you for that statement, and statements like that are reckless to our troops. Don’t say, ‘I support the troops on one hand,’ and then ‘a two-month mission is a quagmire.’ That’s false equivalation,” he continued, appearing to jumble up the word “equivalence.”
Hegseth kept going—and going, and going.
“Who you cheering for here? Who you pulling for?” he droned on. “Your hatred for President Trump blinds you to the truth of the success of this mission and the historic stakes that the president is addressing.”
The rant evidently resonated with Bongino, who lavished praise on Hegseth, calling him “a great guy” and “an amazing leader.”
“Pete has done an amazing job despite multiple, multiple attacks, and he’s a real guy who‘s had issues like you and I have had,” he said. “He’s gotten over them, and he’s reached the most important job in the United States presidency cabinet.”
But in one offhand remark that would appear to cheapen all the praise he’d just poured on Hegseth, Bongino said he also felt that the Trump kids might have a chance in 2028.
“I think Don Jr. could make a run, I’m not sure he’s interested in politics. I think Eric could make a run. I think Lara Trump could make a run.”
