Pressed at the Pentagon

Inside the Pentagon on Thursday afternoon, new chief spokesperson Sean Parnell convened a few dozen journalists for an off-the-record meeting to introduce himself to the press corps. The meeting, which came on the heels of the Pete Hegseth-led Defense Department evicting eight news outlets from their workspaces inside its Virginia headquarters, started off cordially enough. Parnell, a former Army airborne ranger, explained to reporters that he was not a typical "comms guy" and had joined the armed forces after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Despite the long-running tensions between Donald Trump and the press, he indicated he wanted to have a good relationship with journalists.

But the meeting quickly went off the rails when reporters in the room were given the opportunity to ask questions. In one particularly heated moment, a reporter asked Parnell why the Pentagon had set up a rapid response account on X that effectively exists to trash the press. "That's when the mask slipped," a reporter, who was in the room for the meeting, explained to me. “It was bleak and horrible,” added another.

Indeed, things grew quite strange and adversarial. This story is based on first-hand accounts from reporters who were in the room and requested anonymity to relay the events that transpired because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. A spokesperson for the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.