Bill Kristol: The 'rebellion in the military may be greater than we can see'

Less than 24 hours after JD Vance's pal, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, resigned from the Pentagon after tensions withDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth, conservative commentator Bill Kristol warned that people he knows in the higher echelons of the military are clearly bothered enough to leak information to the media.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Driscoll spent months in conflict with Hegseth over the Army’s direction, modernization efforts, readiness and Hegseth’s removals or sidelining of senior officers. Driscoll was especially troubled by the firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and by personnel decisions affecting other generals. He warned President Donald Trump that the loss of experienced leadership was impeding Army transformation and readiness.

Kristol said on the Tuesday morning Bulwark podcast that it's giving him sharp memories of the George W. Bush White House in 2006, when Donald Rumsfeld was making things in the Iraq war worse. At that point, the White House told him that they couldn't get rid of a secretary of defense while they were under siege by Democrats ahead of the midterm election. In that case, Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress.

"Hegseth is overseeing the biggest military disaster in decades, and it's on Trump, and it's going to hurt them in the election," Sam Stein predicted.

Were Hegseth to be fired, Kristol said that the deputy who would take over knows "even less than Hegseth... well, that's not fair, but it would be a little weird to make him SecDef."

"What Hegseth is doing is so extreme, is how I would put it, so radical, that it would be hard to get someone else who wants any future anywhere in the national security world to go in and continue firing generals so he can politicize the military," Kristol continued. "Go in and do the woke insanity stuff — the kind of stuff that Hegseth does just every day. The chest pounding."

"Hegseth, in a weird way, because he's more radical than, more outrageous than, less qualified than the people he's fired, in a funny way, he has more — it's a little harder for Trump to get away from him at this point. And Trump wants to use the military in various ways in the next two years, and is he confident that if he replaces Hegseth, Hegseth's misuse of the military — could he still get away with using the military?" he questioned.

He wondered if there was someone in Congress who is a "Markwayne Mullin" type of person, willing to cause less controversy publicly than people like Kristi Noem and Hegseth. But even in that case, Kristol said that a leader on the House or Senate Armed Services Committee may not want to go in and do what Hegseth is doing with the military.

"You have to be willing to burn a lot of bridges to do what Hegseth is doing," Kristol said.

Kristol said that the leaking is "astonishing," but that there hasn't been a "literal rebellion" like those in U.S. history, in which four-star generals resign with statements about their resignations.

Stein said that things like what Driscoll did also haven't happened until this week.

"Right, so we're one step — this is something to really watch over the next few months. I think you're right to say this, Sam. I mean, it's really important."

Kristol and Stein brought up Admiral Daryl Caudle, the chief of Naval Operations, who is considered a Hegseth/Trump choice loyal to the Trump agenda.

"If Caudle is not concurring ... Caudle is not like Mark Milley or something, who is from the previous regime. Caudle is a guy who was a dubious appointment, a lot of my friends who know the military said, because he was catering to Hegseth and Trump. I think that maybe fits into your point, actually, that maybe the depth of discontent and the rebellion in the military is greater than one can see right now," Kristol said.