Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth received the nickname “Colonel Vodka” while working at Fox News because of his addiction to alcohol, journalist and biographer of Donald Trump Michael Wolf said on his Substack blog. According to Wolf, the US President's inner circle considers Hegseth incompetent, but Trump remains the only person preventing the dismissal of the minister.
According to Wolf, who was threatened with legal action by Trump in 2018 over his book Fire and Fury, Hegseth, a former TV host and Army veteran, took the job to “clean up the Pentagon.” The new administration had concerns that certain military leaders would use their experience and expertise “to counterbalance” the president and his appointees, as was the case during Trump's first term, Wolf wrote.
“That’s why Trump, in his second attempt at the presidency, hired “Colonel Vodka” to run his Department of Defense,” Wolf claims.
According to the journalist, Hegseth received the nickname from former Fox News executive Roger Ailes. He allegedly more than once noticed a tendency among his subordinates to talk about his service in the National Guard after drinking alcohol.
Wolf is convinced that Hegseth's incompetence put the United States at risk in an avoidable war with Iran that led to an arms shortage.
“Daily leaks about him [Хегсета] failures, stupidities, abuses and generally strange behavior – his wife, for example, moved to the Pentagon as a de facto deputy – became the basis for a growing mutiny of the command with the aim of his resignation,” Wolf writes based on his information.
As the journalist notes, dissatisfaction with the 46-year-old minister has recently spread from the Pentagon to the White House. Trump's closest advisers are confident that the best time to fire Hegseth “was yesterday,” but the president remains inconsistent, the author writes.
Deputy Pentagon press officer Joel Valdez denied any conflict surrounding Hegseth's work to The Daily Beast.
“Michael Wolf is a known liar who writes fan fiction about the resistance for lowbrow left-wingers. The same as those who write for the Daily Beast,” Valdez said.
