U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. first lady Melania Trump attend a ceremony marking the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks at the Pentagon, in Washington D.C., U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstei
President Donald Trump's own team has alienated the military to such a degree that support for them has "bottomed out," making another key voting bloc abandon the president.
Over the past nearly two years, Trump has lost Latino voters, the small percentage of Black voters he swayed in 2024, suburban women, young voters, some white male voters and now members of the military. While one host questioned if it was due to people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one veteran explained that he's only the executioner for the death of the republic. Trump is the one calling the shots.
MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle reported the Washington Post story that Hegseth intends to remove 20 percent of the top U.S. military leaders in the country while America is in another war. Hegseth meets this week only with attractive soldiers who have his desired weight-to-height ratio.
Speaking about it on Wednesday, veterans' rights activist Paul Rieckhoff explained that even if Democrats were able to impeach Hegseth and remove him before he fires everyone, the problem isn't only coming from him.
"Welcome to the cold open for 'Saturday Night Live' this week, right?" Reickhoff quipped about Hegseth's obsession with having fit and attractive men around him. "But it is our reality. And I've always said that Pete Hegseth is the acting secretary of 'Culture War.' His job has been to wage culture war on the Pentagon. And this is the latest extension of that."
The problem that Reickhoff sees coming is that the top 20 percent of the U.S. military means that Hegseth is "eliminating the most intelligent, the most experienced, the most powerful people who could push back on you. This is an expansion of the purge. This is a way to consolidate power. This is a way to remove dissent. This is a way to drive forward his agenda."
While the stories about Hegseth's obsession with fit and attractive men have resulted in memes and jokes on late-night comedy shows, Reickhoff said that the bigger issue is that this is part of Trump's plan to "bring a chainsaw through the Pentagon."
"If you can remove 20 percent of the generals, that is a huge number of people who push back on the Iran war, on attacking Cuba, on regulating AI. And it clears a path. And I always remind people: imagine where Pete Hegseth would be if he wasn't screwing up all the time. That's how far he is on plan, and he's not slowing down," said Reickhoff.
That's what prompted Ruhle to ask whether military members are abandoning Trump's votes.
"Yes, it's changed with everybody. I mean, he's bottomed out with his base and the manosphere and people like Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan. He's bottomed out within the military, too, especially because they saw the USS Lincoln hanging out in the ocean for months and months," explained Reickhoff. "And by the way, an underreported story, part of the story, the USS Roosevelt just left. Nothing has stopped the Iran war."
"Donald Trump is still doing anything he wants with the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and nothing is stopping him," he cautioned.