A quiet verbal order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office triggered a full-blown crisis inside the Trump administration — one that cost taxpayers $2.2 million and left key national security officials blindsided.
According to an explosive Reuters report, Hegseth abruptly grounded 11 military cargo flights carrying heavy artillery bound for Ukraine, without informing the Pentagon, the State Department, U.S. allies — or even the White House. The move stalled a crucial weapons delivery for days and ignited a diplomatic scramble.
The halt came directly after a Jan. 30 Oval Office meeting where Trump reportedly floated the idea of pausing Ukraine aid. But no formal order followed, and according to sources, the president had no idea Hegseth had acted.
Despite that, the White House later told Reuters that Hegseth “had followed a directive from Trump to pause aid to Ukraine, which it said was the administration’s position at the time.” But Reuters noted the administration “did not explain why, according to those who spoke to Reuters, top national security officials in the normal decision-making process didn’t know about the order or why it was so swiftly reversed.”
The result? A week-long delay that ended with the flights finally taking off — and a $2.2 million price tag for the confusion.
Reuters reported that the episode “points to an at-times haphazard policy-making process within the Trump administration and a command structure that is unclear even to its own ranking members.”
Sources told Reuters that the mid-air about-face “shows confusion in how the administration has created and implemented national security policy.”
While the guns are now on their way to Ukraine, the bureaucratic chaos left behind has raised serious questions about who’s really calling the shots — and whether the right hand of the Trump White House knows what the left is doing.
Read the full report on Reuters.
