For more than a year and a half, Pete Hegseth has been one of Donald Trump’s most valuable Cabinet members.
He is muscular and energetic, fueled by a seemingly limitless drive to do some kind of crossfit maneuver with anyone who remains in his orbit for
too long. And, like Trump, who once had his young son fast forward through the parts in Bloodsport that didn’t involve fighting, Hegseth loves violence. The man loves war so much that he renamed his job to have the word “war” in it, and then helped Trump launch one of the most ill-advised conflicts in recent memory. They learned this week that perhaps they like war a little bit more than the American public, who voted for basically every Democrat on their ballots in one of the worst midterm defeats for a ruling party in living memory. All this means that Trump now faces a choice: stand by his loyal Titan of Testosterone, or give Hegseth the axe.
The choice could be made for him, of course. Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie, who was booted from the MAGA movement when Trump endorsed his primary opponent earlier this year, has said that he will trigger a vote to impeach Hegseth as soon as Congress returns to session next week. Even if Massie’s resolution passes the House, at least 67 senators would need to support removing him from his role, which means the most likely way Hegseth will leave the Pentagon is the president deciding it’s time for him to go.
So far, though, Trump has been somewhat even-handed. In an interview with ABC News on Thursday, Trump said he has “every intention to keep” Hegseth in his role. “I get these calls, you know, about him. I don’t understand why,” Trump said. Behind the scenes, though, Trump has also reportedly been asking advisers if they think he should give Hegseth the boot.
“Hegseth is on the chopping block,” one former White House staffer told Fox News.
Trump seems to be mulling this decision over in public. On Wednesday, he said that Hegseth was “doing a very good job” as Secretary of Defense, but also said that Hegseth would be “very popular” if he did choose to move into a different role in politics — such as, say, the Senate seat in Tennessee. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn will be vacating her seat next year after winning the race to become governor of the state, raising the possibility that she could appoint Hegseth to serve out the rest of her term in the Senate.
Hegseth, for his part, has continued to play the loyal soldier. “At the War Department: “We Stand. We Fight. We Defend the Republic,” he posted on Thursday.
Other members of the administration involved in the Iran war have already seen the writing on the wall. On Thursday, reports suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was looking to step down from his post and pivot to a presidential campaign in the near future, basically ensuring that someone else in the Trump administration would be left holding the bag for the Iran war’s fallout. JD Vance, meanwhile, posted a lengthy post-midterms message blaming the GOP’s poor showing on the war.
Trump’s choice isn’t as simple as it looks. On one hand, it would be good politics to swiftly and unequivocally fire Hegseth amid a politically disastrous war, pinning as much of the blame on the former Fox News host as possible. But on the other hand, Trump is still at war — and his current Secretary of Defense is both willing and heavily incentivized to do anything the president asks. Replacing Hegseth now would send the right message, but with Trump staring down the possibility of a rapidly crumbling lame duck administration, offing one of the few truly loyal Cabinet members he has left might not be so appealing.
“Just two days ago the president was in the room with him, telling him, ‘You’re my best guy. You’re the best guy I have,’” one official told CNN.
As another administration official told Fox News, “only Trump knows what he’s gonna do.”
Hegseth may not finish Trump’s entire four-year term in the same role he began it in. If only it looked like the war he started would be similarly short-lived.
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