President Trump’s about-face on last week’s pause of some weapons shipments to Ukraine has revealed chasms within the administration, with the president claiming several times that he didn’t know who approved the halt.
Trump on Monday said he would restart the dispatch of defensive weapons to the country — to include air defense missiles — reasserting control from leading figures in the Defense Department who have sought to pivot the U.S. military away from Europe.
“We’re really starting to see the strains of the limits of the coordination amongst the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department,” said Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Conley said Trump’s ever-shifting policies, reduced personnel across agencies, and varying agendas of influential national security figures has “created this perfect storm” with Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth apparently moving out ahead of Trump on Ukraine lethal aid.
The original decision to hold off on the weapons to Kyiv was largely driven by Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, a close ally to Vice President Vance, and signed off on by Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg after it was discovered that the U.S. only has about 25 percent of the Patriot interceptors needed for all Defense Department military plans, The Guardian first reported.
Multiple outlets also have reported that Hegseth did not inform the White House or the State Department the pause was happening.
Trump’s reversal of the move, at least in part, also comes as he has ramped up criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump said Tuesday was “throwing bulls---” in talks about ending the war.
The result has been a scramble inside the administration to explain the halt and assure the public and the Ukrainian government that it won’t be happening, with Trump taking the lead.
Last week, after learning of the pause, Trump ordered Hegseth to restart the shipment of at least some of the munitions. Then in a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, he sought to downplay his role in the Pentagon’s action, CNN reported.
“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to, they have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump publicly announced Monday evening before a dinner at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons,” Trump added as Hegseth sat beside him. He did not say if the new shipments would include Patriot missile systems, only that they would be “defensive weapons, primarily.”
Then on Tuesday during a Cabinet meeting, Trump claimed ignorance about who approved last week’s pause, but he said he’d given the go-ahead for new weapons to help Kyiv.
“I haven't thought about it,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday, asked whether he had since figured out who ordered the munitions halted to Ukraine. “We’re looking at Ukraine right now and munitions, but no, I have not gotten into it.”
Questioned on how such a major decision could be made inside his government without him knowing, Trump seemed to suggest no such action had been made in the first place.
“I would know. If a decision was made, I will know. I’ll be the first to know, in fact most likely I’d give the order, but I haven’t done that yet,” he said.
The episode comes at a particularly difficult moment for Ukraine, which is struggling to combat intense and increasingly frequent air attacks from Russia in its more-than-three-year war with Moscow.
It also emphasizes the often-disorganized policymaking within the Trump administration and at the Pentagon under Hegseth, who has been under intense scrutiny since March, when it was discovered he relayed highly sensitive details of a military strike in Yemen via a Signal group chat that included the editor in chief of The Atlantic.
That security failure set off a series of firings and messy exits of Hegseth’s staff, leaving him without a chief of staff or many trusted advisers to guide him on major policy decisions such as a lethal aid pause.
The Pentagon’s actions alarmed defense hawks in Congress, chief among them Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said Tuesday that he was glad Trump was restarting deliveries to Ukraine and took a thinly veiled shot at Colby.
“This time, the President will need to reject calls from the isolationists and restrainers within his Administration to limit these deliveries to defensive weapons,” said McConnell, who was the lone Republican to oppose Colby’s confirmation. “And he should disregard those at DoD who invoke munitions shortages to block aid while refusing to invest seriously in expanding munitions production.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill that he was glad weapons are once again flowing to Ukraine, though he dodged a question on whether there is a disconnect between the Pentagon and Trump, saying instead “we'll find out what happened there.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has staunchly denied any daylight between Hegseth and the president.
“Secretary Hegseth provided a framework for the President to evaluate military aid shipments and assess existing stockpiles. This effort was coordinated across the government,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement to The Hill. “The Department will continue to give the President robust options regarding military aid to Ukraine, consistent with his goal of bringing this tragic war to an end and putting America First.”
Other Trump allies, including Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), blamed the media for exaggerating the episode.
“The Pentagon is run by Pete Hegseth, who was appointed by the president, who's close to the president, friends with the president. You see him all the time on TV. There is no disconnect. The disconnect is between the media and the issue,” Risch told The Hill.
But the gaff is igniting new calls for Hegseth to be ousted, including from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).
“Pete Hegseth is the most unqualified Defense secretary in American history. He undermines the ability of the Department of the Defense to keep the American people safe. ... That's been clear and apparent for months,” Jeffries said on CNN’s "The Situation Room."
“Ukraine is an ally. Russia is a sworn enemy of the United States of America. And when you limit Ukraine's ability to be successful in the war of aggression that Russia has launched against a sovereign country, you undermine America's national security interests, and that's highly problematic,” Jeffries added.
Conley said the episode highlighted the absolute need for Hegseth, Colby and any other administration officials to get in alignment with the president.
“They've gotten out ahead of him or misinterpreted what he's interested [in] or pursuing their own agenda, and they just cannot do that anymore,” she said.
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