Pete Hegseth is set to face the same fate as Donald Rumsfeld, who learned what a midterm rout can do to a wartime defense secretary.
George W. Bush insisted on keeping Rumsfeld, then announced his exit the day after voters handed Congress to Democrats. Pete Hegseth now stands in his shoes.
Hegseth has made a habit of surviving as he weathered sharing war plans in a commercial chat app that accidentally included a journalist, allegations of war crimes in the Caribbean, and anger over his purge of top generals. But Tuesday’s Republican bloodbath, which even his own bosses tie to the Iran war he so loudly championed, has put his future in doubt, The New York Times reports.
Hakeem Jeffries, expected to be the next House speaker, didn’t miss the parallel. “Why is Pete Hegseth still around?” he asked in an interview with the Times.
The war, now eight months old, sent prices climbing at gas stations and grocery stores, and voters noticed. Vice President JD Vance posted Wednesday that “the reason we lost is the war,” a line several Pentagon officials took as a pointed shot at their boss.
Publicly, the president isn’t budging. Trump said on election night he wasn’t planning cabinet changes, and when reporters asked about Hegseth on Wednesday, he said: “I think he’s doing a very good job.” Privately, he has mostly blamed his political team, two people who have spoken with him told the Times.
Hegseth is digging in. “We don’t back down, and that especially applies now,” he said in a defiant video Thursday. His spokesman, Sean Parnell, said Hegseth intends to serve until Trump’s term ends, waving off Democrats’ threatened probes as “sham witch hunts.”
Yet some of the sharpest pressure is coming from his own side. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie said Wednesday night that only one thing would stop him from refiling impeachment articles: if “Hegseth resigns.” Lawmakers and aides think the charges could clear the House with GOP votes, though Senate conviction is a long shot. House Oversight Chair James Comer, also a Republican, told NewsNation there are “a lot of questions about Hegseth.”
Allies have floated a soft landing, an appointment to Marsha Blackburn’s Senate seat now that she’s Tennessee’s governor-elect, though Republican aides call it unlikely.
The uncertainty is already rippling through the ranks. Officers whose promotions Hegseth blocked had been preparing to retire; on Wednesday, some were told to wait. A new secretary could revive their careers. Sen. Jack Reed, expected to lead the Armed Services Committee, suggested one may be coming, saying stopping the damage probably means Hegseth’s departure “one way or the other.”
