U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attend the 9/11 observance at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s controversial new media policy — and the claims behind it — may backfire, experts are warning.

Hegseth’s new policy was rejected by nearly every major credentialed news organization — including his former employer, Fox News — some of which said it infringes on their First Amendment rights.

“Press freedom groups decried the Pentagon’s new media restrictions, arguing they appear ‘designed to stifle a free press and potentially expose us to prosecution for simply doing our jobs,’ per the Pentagon Press Association,” Axios reported.

Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton noted that the Defense Chief’s “17 pages of new rules for media in the Pentagon are a mistake and upend over 80 years of American norms. The wide range of outlets refusing these rules – from the Washington Post to Newsmax and The Hill – show how indefensible these new rules are.”

“It doesn’t seem like the whole story is being told to our viewers here,” declared Fox News senior strategic analyst General Jack Keane (Ret.). The Pentagon, he said, wants to “spoon-feed information to the journalists, and that will be their story. That’s not journalism. Journalism is going out and finding the story and getting all the facts that support it.”

Journalist Barbara Starr, a former CNN Pentagon reporter for two decades, told anchor Kaitlan Collins that she thinks Hegseth is “about to potentially run into a buzz saw of trouble, because reporters are going to continue to report whether they’re inside the building or not.”

Wednesday marks the first full day of Hegseth’s new policy, which almost all Pentagon reporters refused to sign. By doing so, they were forced to hand in their press passes.

Asked if what he was telling President Donald Trump was true — that reporters had unfettered access to almost everywhere in the Pentagon, including classified areas, Starr emphatically responded, “No, absolutely not. And he knows it, and he should be telling the president the truth.”

“What Hegseth is about to lose,” by reporters not being in the building, “I don’t think he even comprehends.”

“He’s about to lose the ability to have communication with millions of Americans who read blogs, read newspapers, tune into TV to get military news, to find out what’s going on, to find out how their tax money’s being spent, what the troops are up to, how military families are doing, how women and minorities are doing in the military,” Starr explained. “He’s going to be have a tough time really communicating.”

She said that “behind the scenes, the big question that’s being whispered about more and more is, ‘What is Hegseth afraid of?’ If he’s afraid of leaks, go after those he believes are leaking. If he’s afraid of not showing the president how tough he is, well, he probably needs to start by telling the truth about what’s really going on with the media and the Pentagon and going from there.”

On Wednesday, The Washington Post’s military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe reported that “Hegseth’s bid to impose sweeping restrictions on journalists at the Pentagon was orchestrated with advice of his legal fixer, Tim Parlatore.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that it is “utterly disingenuous when Hegseth says that the new Pentagon crackdown is about protecting classified information. It’s about protecting Hegseth.”

“Remember that it was Hegseth himself who sent advance information about a Yemen bombing to his wife, brother and personal lawyer in a Signal chat,” he noted. “That’s just the kind of scandal, involving mishandling of classified information, that reporters should be uncovering and reporting on. But the new Pentagon policy would bar them from inquiring about it. So we have someone with a record of mishandling secret information taking steps to protect himself politically and saying that it’s to protect national secrets? Really?! I’m rolling my eyes.”