Gabrielle Cuccia criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s crackdown on press access at the Pentagon. And then, she said, she was fired.
Cuccia was briefly the chief Pentagon correspondent for the small and staunchly pro-Trump TV channel One America News, OAN for short.
A self-proclaimed “MAGA girl,” Cuccia positioned herself as a proudly conservative voice among the normally nonpartisan Pentagon press corps. But she grew perturbed by Hegseth’s actions against the press.
In a post on her personal Substack account on Tuesday, she wrote that the Defense Department’s recent move to make vast parts of the Pentagon off-limits to journalists was a “troubling shift.” She heaped doubt on the Defense Department’s rationale for the restrictions. And she questioned why Hegseth hasn’t held any formal press briefings since being sworn in.
“This article isn’t to serve as a tearing down” of Hegseth, she wrote. “This is me wanting to keep MAGA alive.”
