‘Answering this call was my duty and the fulfillment of my oath’
Page A6From§Eachthe midnight edition — 1 September 2026
Army secretary quits over feud with Hegseth as Pentagon quietly paid MAGA influencers to boost his agenda.
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As it ran on the front
Word came down this week that the Army's top civilian, Dan Driscoll, is walking out the door after months of getting run over by Pete Hegseth's shop — that's four different outlets confirming the same fight, which tells you it wasn't quiet. Departure is the polite word. What actually happened is a guy in charge of the Army decided the job wasn't worth what the boss's office was putting him through, and he left before they could push him.
Now here's the part that ties the knot for me. Same week, a report drops that the Pentagon has been quietly cutting checks to MAGA-aligned influencers, paying them to carry water for Hegseth's agenda online. Not a leak, not a rumor — a documented hire, paid for out of the same building where a Secretary just walked because he couldn't stomach the internal politics. So the man in charge of actual soldiers can't survive the internal fight, but there's apparently a line item for content creators to defend those politics in public. That's not coincidence, that's priorities, and priorities are budgets with better PR.…
…(cont) Think about what that means in plain terms. The Pentagon didn't have trouble finding money to hire people to make Hegseth look good online. It had trouble keeping a Senate-confirmed official who disagreed with him in the building. One of those problems got a resignation letter. The other got a marketing contract. If you're wondering which one the institution decided was worth fixing, you already know, because they told you with where the money went.
This is the oldest trick in the book, and it works because it's boring enough that nobody stops to look at it twice. You don't need a scandal with a name if you've got a payroll that quietly does the talking for you. The influencers get paid, the narrative holds, and the guy who actually ran things walks. Next time someone tells you there's no budget for something you needed, remember there was budget for this — paying strangers on the internet to say the boss is doing a great job, the same week the last honest assessment of that job just quit.
“So the guy runs off after getting steamrolled by Hegseth, and the same week it comes out the Pentagon's been paying influencers to keep that same agenda looking good online. That's not a coincidence, that's a budget line. Somebody signs off on paying randos to praise a boss nobody in the building wants to work under.”
“Secretary Driscoll's departure was a personal decision, nothing to do with policy disagreements — the Pentagon's engagement with independent media voices is standard outreach, fully within guidelines. Look, paying people to amplify the Secretary's agenda isn't propaganda, it's — okay, it's basically propaganda, but the good kind.”
The receipts
Driscoll’s resignation comes after months of tension between him and War Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Post previously reported that Hegseth feared being fired by Trump and replaced by Driscoll.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.