Pete Hegseth was one of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet choices. Especially so given that he would head one of the nation’s most crucial executive branch sectors: the Defense Department.

Hegseth successfully fended off a smear campaign following his nomination and was confirmed by the narrowest of margins. It took a tiebreaking vote from Vice President JD Vance to get him through.

However, Hegseth’s confirmation has not stopped the subsequent campaign to get the defense secretary removed. That’s what happens when your job is to disrupt things.

The first big push came following the Signal snafu, when leftist journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to a Pentagon group chat on an app called Signal. Hegseth was blasted for claiming that no classified information was communicated regarding a planned military operation against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

While National Security Advisor Michael Waltz eventually confirmed that the fault for “accidentally” adding Goldberg to the Signal chat was on his office, the media talkingheads used it as an excuse to question Hegseth’s leadership ability. How could he not have noticed that a member of the media was in the group chat?

However, Trump was unfazed by the Democrats’ outcry and stood resolutely by both Hegseth and Waltz.

Over the weekend, we got round two of the Get-Hegseth Crusade. This came courtesy of two articles, one in The New York Times and the other from Politico. The Times sought to reinvigorate the Signal controversy by noting from anonymous sources that Hegseth had created another Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, lawyer, and some Pentagon folks. The Times spun this “revelation” as more evidence of Hegseth’s supposed misuse of a Signal chat to share “highly sensitive military information.”

One of the big issues over which the Times expressed great consternation was the inclusion of Hegseth’s wife in the Signal group chat. This is ironic, though, given the fact that the Times seemed to have no issue with Jill Biden effectively running the White House concurrent with Joe Biden’s precipitous mental decline. Apparently, that does not rise to the level of a scandal to the Times.

Politico’s article seemingly had more clout. It was an op-ed written by John Ullyot, who, up until his sudden resignation last week, was a lead Pentagon spokesman.

According to Ullyot, “It’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.” His rationale for this conclusion is that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”

As Ullyot puts it, “Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge that will leave him without his two closest advisers of over a decade — [Darin] Caldwell and [Colin] Selnick — and without chiefs of staff for him and his deputy.”

Referring to March as “The Month from Hell,” Ullyot also cited Hegseth’s handling of the Signalgate scandal as more evidence of his poor leadership. “Once the Signalgate story broke,” he wrote, “Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that ‘nobody was texting war plans.’” Ullyot blasted that decision as “a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.”

This all does sound pretty damning, though it likely should be taken with a huge grain of salt. For one thing, chaos and challenging the media are in Hegseth’s job description. Furthermore, reading down through the op-ed, it looks like the bigger issue is one of policy disagreement, though it’s being couched as a concern over Hegseth’s leadership ability.

That policy disagreement seems to center on those who want to press for a more isolationist anti-war position, especially when it comes to dealing with Iran and the Middle East, versus those who view the need to continue to maintain the threat of military presence in the region.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty insightfully observed that Tucker Carlson, who holds a more isolationist foreign policy perspective, has offered high praise of Ullyot. Could it be that Ullyot served as Carlson’s Pentagon source for his March 17 posting on X? “A strike on the Iranian nuclear sites,” Carlson wrote, “will almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths at bases throughout the Middle East, and cost the United States tens of billions of dollars. The cost of future acts of terrorism on American soil may be even higher. Those aren’t guesses. Those are the Pentagon’s own estimates.”

The trouble is that these Pentagon leaks are still happening.

So, is it true that Hegseth is effectively flailing at shadows in a futile effort to get the leakers? Or is this evidence that these deep state actors are getting nervous and worried?

Combine these stories with NPR’s recent reporting that the White House is looking for a new defense secretary to replace Hegseth, and this looks a lot like a coordinated effort to push him out, whatever it takes.