Gabrielle Cuccia, a self-described “MAGA girl” who served as One America News’ chief Pentagon correspondent, says the far-right network fired her after she criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war against the press.
In a blistering Substack post, Cuccia – who served in the first Trump administration – tore into the Pentagon for limiting media access and blasted Hegseth for not holding one press briefing since taking over as the head of the Defense Department. Specifically, she took issue with the agency closing off portions of the Pentagon that had previously always been open to reporters.
“He claims it’s to ‘reduce the opportunity for in-person inadvertent or unauthorized disclosures.’ But let’s be honest — since January, the real leaks from the Pentagon haven’t come from the press. They’ve come from Hegseth’s own team and other senior officials,” she wrote.
“I personally know reporters who’ve sent formal emails to Hegseth’s office requesting clarification on specific topics — and received radio silence in return,” Cuccia added. “Let’s call this what it is: limiting freedom of movement in the name of ‘national security.’”
Making sure to burnish her pro-Trump bona fides, Cuccia noted that it is “pretty obvious how I feel about fake news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and ABC,” adding that she thinks “their obsession with advocating for transgender inclusion in the military is a complete waste of time and taxpayer resources.”
At the same time, though, she noted that while their “coverage may not be my cup of tea,” it “doesn’t mean I stand behind Hegseth’s decision” to limit reporters’ movements through the Pentagon.
“It also raises a fair question: why has the Department prioritized limiting press access, while the Secretary of Defense himself has yet to hold a briefing in the press room during his first 100 days?” Cuccia also asked.
Two days after she published her fateful Substack post, Cuccia told CNN that her bureau chief asked her to turn in her Pentagon badge. The following days, she said, she was let go by the network.
Asked to comment on the circumstances surrounding Cuccia’s termination, OAN president Charles Herring told The Independent that “we don’t comment on employee related issues.”
“On Thursday, my Pentagon badge was revoked. By Friday, I was out of a job,” Cuccia told The Independent. “The timing came just days after I published a personal Substack article raising legitimate concerns about new restrictions placed on journalists inside the Pentagon — an article my employer later confirmed had been ‘put on their radar.’”
She continued: “When a reporter asks inconvenient questions about government overreach, the response should be accountability — not silence, and certainly not separation. You can love your country and still challenge those who govern it. I’ve never been afraid to speak the truth, even when it costs me. My loyalty is — and always will be — to my country above all else. And for those reasons, this isn’t the end.”
The Independent also asked Cuccia if she was aware if OAN had tapped anyone else to replace her yet as the network’s top Pentagon reporter.
“I can confirm I have been contacted by potential new hires to fill my role asking how to do the job, what are the expectations, what qualifies as conflicts of interest within the role, and what my experience was like with OAN,” she said. “I was told that OAN is seeking to fill this role as soon as today, Monday, June 2nd.”
Cuccia, who had briefly worked for OAN as a White House correspondent towards the end of the first Trump administration, was re-hired by OAN in February to lead its defense coverage after Hegseth took away NBC’s longtime workspace and handed it to the MAGA channel. This was, of course, part of the administration’s larger effort to push out mainstream media outlets and elevate sympathetic right-wing coverage.
Initially elated with the opportunity, Cuccia would take to her social media accounts to document how she personally renovated the old NBC office into what she deemed “Liberty Lounge.” Still, her joy soon grew into skepticism and disillusionment over the way Hegseth handled the Signalgate scandal.
“Our SecDef told us that it was Fake News. That it was another Russia Hoax,” she noted. “As a MAGA girl myself, I cannot stand when we take something super serious and legitimate – such as the Russia Hoax – and conflate everything and anything that is an inconvenient truth, throw in the towel and say, ‘Yep its just a Russia Hoax,’ and then proceed to call people losers and liars for reporting something that was unfortunately… true.”
Cuccia insisted that following Signalgate, “the Pentagon stopped all press briefings moving forward and simultaneously decided to lock one of the doors that connects journalists to the DoD’s Public Affairs Officials, a door that has always been wide open.”
She also took Hegseth to task for the “cheap PR move” of using the Memorial Day weekend to “conveniently” announce that reporters are no longer allowed access to the offices of the Secretary of Defense or the Joint Chiefs without an official escort.
“This Administration, to my surprise, also locked the doors to the Pentagon Briefing room, a protocol that was never in place in prior Administrations, and a door that is never locked for press at the White House,” she wrote.
“The Commander-in-Chief welcomes the hard questions… and yes, even the dumb ones. Why won’t the Secretary of Defense do the same?” Cuccia rhetorically asked.
Since telling CNN on Friday that she was fired by OAN, Cuccia has since changed her X profile to read “Fmr Chief Pentagon Correspondent” and posted a story on her Instagram that included a screenshot of her Substack article. “You know… I was once told that a former peer feared I was too MAGA for this job,” she captioned the story. “I guess I was. I guess I am.”
Throughout her Substack post, she asserted that her intention in sounding off against the Pentagon’s press policy was to “tear down” Hegseth, but due to her “wanting to keep MAGA alive.” She also repeatedly used the phrase “love your country, not your government,” which is a slogan she’s emblazoned on tank tops that she began selling on Etsy last year.
Prior to returning to OAN this year, Cuccia had drawn attention to herself by posing with firearms on her social media accounts, hawking her MAGA-branded merchandise, and once causing a Newsmax host to cut off her mic after she began peddling Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims on the air. Newsmax, like One America News, has been sued multiple times for defamation for amplifying election denialism and voting machine conspiracy theories.
If she was indeed fired for criticizing Hegseth and the administration, this wouldn’t be the first time that OAN has terminated an employee for speaking out publicly. In 2021, the right-wing cable channel fired producer Marty Golingan after he told the New York Times on the record that many network staffers don’t think many of OAN stories are factual.
One America News, which had been facing an existential crisis after losing nearly all of its cable and satellite contracts in recent years over its conspiratorial coverage, appears to be on the upswing since Trump’s return to the White House.
Besides taking over NBC’s office space in the Pentagon, the network hired former GOP congressman (and one-time attorney general nominee) Matt Gaetz as a primetime host, and White House senior adviser Kari Lake announced last month that she struck a deal with the channel to blast out its content on Voice of America’s airwaves.
Cuccia isn’t the only conservative media figure who has scrutinized the Pentagon press crackdown. After CNN first reported on her firing, Fox News media host Howie Kurtz highlighted the criticism over Hegseth’s actions against the media and brought on former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr to blast the defense secretary (and former Fox News host) for restricting press access.
