What did Donald Trump do today?

He got cut out of the loop by his own Defense Secretary for months—or at least, that's what he says.

Today, the Trump White House leaked a story about Pete Hegseth, the weekend Fox News personality Trump appointed as his Secretary of Defense, that would normally be a death knell for a Cabinet member: that Hegseth had made a major policy shift without telling Trump. Specifically, Hegseth is being accused by Trump officials of having unilaterally halted weapons shipments to Ukraine in January, less than a week after being confirmed—and without telling anyone at the White House.

Since returning to office, Trump has pursued what White House insiders call a "no scalps" policy: he refuses to fire officials he has appointed for misconduct or incompetence for fear of drawing negative press attention. This was a constant problem during Trump's first term, in which he appointed dozens of people of dubious qualifications, only to attack them in the press after they were fired or forced out. 

Already in Trump's second term, this is being put to the test. His former National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, was forced out of his job last week after he accidentally invited a journalist to a group chat about war plans, in the process revealing several additional massive security breaches that he and other Trump officials, including Hegseth, had caused. But instead of being dumped entirely, Waltz was given a fig leaf—Trump immediately nominated him to be his Ambassador to the United Nations.

Hegseth lost jobs with two different veterans' charities for behavior while violently drunk in public, has white nationalist-symbol tattoos that got him deemed an "insider threat" by the military he now oversees, and was called "an abuser of women…that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego" by his own mother. He's also astonishingly unpopular with both troops and civilians alike.

Trump clearly values having a Defense Secretary who cannot stand up to him or push back against his impulses, as his first-term appointee, Gen. James Mattis, did. But Trump also values being seen as in complete control of everything, even when that is manifestly not the case, and the idea that Hegseth was pursuing his own policy for months without being noticed is the sort of thing Trump would normally be enraged by. 

It is possible that there is a faction within Trump's administration trying to manipulate him into firing Hegseth—which would also be familiar territory from Trump's first term.

Why does this matter?

• It's extremely bad if a Secretary of Defense is making major policy decisions without the President noticing for months.
  

• This is not the sort of thing that would happen in a remotely competent administration.