It’s probably not great that the “Secretary of War” appears to have gone stark, raving bonkers. Yup, Pete Hegseth, hardly the most stable individual even on his best day, has apparently gone totally off the rails. That’s according to a new report from The Daily Mail, who report his terrified staff believe the truth must come out.
They claim Charlie Kirk’s death has plunged Hegseth’s mental health into deep crisis, that he’s currently terrifyingly “manic”, and has spent the weeks since Kirk’s death “erupting in tirades, raging at staffers, and obsessing about matters related to his security.”
The understandably concerned staffers say Hegseth is becoming increasingly volatile, displaying “frantic” behavior during key meetings, including compulsively fidgeting and monotously pacing around the room:
“There’s a manic quality about him. Or let me rephrase, an even more manic quality, which is really saying something”
Or, as another puts it more bluntly: “Dude is crawling out of his skin”.
Get the net
This mental health collapse is also impacting national security. Hegseth is said to be making a series of “erratic demands”, including an order that all military officials above the rank of one-star general attend a “pep rally” in Washington in which Hegseth will teach them about his “warrior ethos”.
Sorry, I have no idea why all the Generals are being gathered.
— KC-10 Driver
But…given Hegseth’s history, there is a non-zero chance he’s going to insist they PT with him at 06:00, and it would be up there with the funniest thing that’s ever happened in the military. pic.twitter.com/xp7PY9Ds6t
B-737 Wrangler (@MCCCANM) September 25, 2025
His paranoia is also the reason behind his new rules about press access, most notably his demand that reporters obtain permission from his department to publish any information gathered at the Pentagon, to prevent negative stories emerging in the press.
Beyond that, Hegseth ordered the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division to yank their agents away from ongoing investigations to guard his various houses. This particular request was said to be the result of demands from his wife Jenny, who is apparently matching her husband in the paranoia stakes. As one staffer summarizes: “That warrior persona, he’s spooked.”
Hegseth’s lawyers have slammed these comments, demanding that the journalists who reported them be suspended and saying that all this is stupid. Well, as these sources are anonymous, it’s difficult to verify, but the Daily Mail is a famously right-wing and conservative newspaper, so it’s unusual that they’d do a hit piece on a Trump official if they didn’t have all their ducks in a row.
In the meantime, I guess we have to just live with the fact that America’s Secretary of War might be collapsing into a paranoid and twitching whirlwind of fury and resentment. Ah, what’s the worst that could happen?
