
James O'Keefe put on a mustache, a pair of glasses, and went on a gay date. His companion was Brandon Newsom, a senior official in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy with sixteen years inside the Pentagon.
Newsom didn't know he was being filmed.
"I have the influence," Newsom told O'Keefe across the dinner table. "I can undo whatever's been done."
He meant Trump's agenda. He was specific about why he thought it deserved undoing. "I think Trump is a narcissist," he said. On Iran policy: "Yeah. I think it's completely stupid, but it's driven on one man's ego."
What makes those words matter beyond dinner-table venting is what Newsom actually does at the Pentagon. He oversees corporate operations for the Office of the Secretary of the Navy — including HR, IT, security, facilities, records management, and the implementation of executive orders. That last one is worth reading twice. The man on camera bragging about his ability to reverse the president's agenda is directly responsible for implementing the president's executive orders.
"I can undo whatever's been done" is a job description.
At one point in the conversation, Newsom sensed something might be off. "I mean, you could be a news reporter," he told O'Keefe.
He was closer than he knew.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao was unambiguous in response. "The Department of the Navy takes the conduct shown in this video extremely seriously. Such statements and apparent intent to leverage a position to undermine the policies and direction set by our elected leaders are inappropriate and incompatible with the standards expected of Department personnel." Newsom was placed on administrative leave effective immediately.
O'Keefe released the footage on July 22 with a question worth sitting with: "If a government director says he can slow or reverse a sitting President's agenda, who really governs the country?" The voter chooses a direction. The sixteen-year bureaucrat with the executive order implementation queue decides how fast it travels — or whether it moves at all.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made cleaning house at the Pentagon a stated mission. Brandon Newsom is the reason that mission exists. The issue runs deeper than one official talking too freely over dinner. The system allowed someone openly hostile to the president's agenda to sit in a senior role overseeing executive order implementation for nearly two decades without anyone inside the building treating that as a problem worth solving.
The monthly voluntary Christian prayer service Hegseth reinstated at the Pentagon drew more documented institutional resistance than a senior official bragging about using his position to reverse the commander-in-chief's policies. That's the calibration problem in plain view.
Newsom is on administrative leave. The footage is out. The pattern is familiar — O'Keefe releases the tape, the agency responds, the subject is removed. The question that never gets answered is how many more Brandon Newsoms are still at their desks, keeping their heads down and their executive order review queues quietly backlogged.
Sixteen years inside the building. One hidden camera. A mustache and a pair of glasses. That's all it took to find out what a Pentagon insider actually thinks about the man the country elected — twice.


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