Why Donald Trump Is Stuck With Pete Hegseth
Newsweek · C · trust 60/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Every passing month of a lengthening war in Iran, and every senior firing amid multiple reports of friction with his military leadership, has made Pete Hegseth appear increasingly vulnerable on his perch at the Pentagon .
Yet there is a strong case that the opposite is true. Hegseth, in fighting his lonely war inside the Pentagon, and not yet able to bring the war in Iran to a conclusion even as President Donald Trump repeatedly claims victory, is rooted firmly in his place .
When Dan Driscoll resigned as Army secretary on August 31, he left behind a service with no Senate-confirmed civilian leader and no Senate-confirmed chief of staff.
Driscoll, an Iraq veteran who wanted to modernize the military and make it ready for the new high-tech era of warfare, was also the official most often named as the man who would run the Pentagon if Hegseth ever stopped.
That, right there, is the shape of one of Trump’s problems. His defense secretary is extending deployments into 2027, Republican senators are calling for his removal, and an internal bench that could supply his replacement has been cleared—much of it by Hegseth.
His own personnel decisions have thinned the structure that a successor would need. The removals that exposed Hegseth to criticism are the same that now make him harder to replace.
Moreover, Trump’s bold claims to have already won the war in Iran—which is still running hot, with fresh exchanges of fire this week—would be seriously undermined by the sudden removal of the top official leading what the president presents as a stunning victory.
It would read as a verdict on the campaign itself; an expensive signal to send in the middle of one.
Trump insists that he wants Hegseth exactly where he is. But does he have much of a choice anymore?
Roughly 50,000 U.S. troops are committed to the Middle East, and Hegseth has now ordered some of them to stay into next year, according to reporting drawn from the Pentagon’s classified force-allocation process.
The cost is not only counted in months. The Wall Street Journal reports a maintenance backlog from the extended deployments that could take years to clear.
More telling, the commanders responsible for Europe, the Pacific and Latin America formally registered their disagreement with further extensions before agreeing to carry out the orders. Generals do not put dissent in writing casually.
Related Story Vladimir Putin the Moth None of it looks temporary either. U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on August 30, their first action against Iran in a month, and Iran retaliated against sites hosting American forces.
Both sides exchanged fire again on September 1, with Iranian attacks reaching Gulf states.
Nor is there an off-ramp in view that would make a handover smooth and simple.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,215 U.S. adults, conducted from August 21 to 24, found 83 percent expected American military involvement in Iran to run on for an extended period, up from 60 percent in early March.
There is no iron law that a concurrent war makes a defense secretary un-fireable. Presidents have done it before.
What it does is ensure the job cannot sit empty while the Senate works through a nominee, and raises the price of whoever holds it in the meantime—especially when your enemies would read their removal as a tacit admission that you are losing the conflict.
Driscoll mattered well beyond the Army. He had long been viewed as a possible replacement for Hegseth but quit after months of clashes with his boss over Army leadership. He left through a door Hegseth had already cleared.
Hegseth removed Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George—a Driscoll ally—and other senior officers, leaving the service with neither a confirmed secretary nor a confirmed chief while operations against Iran resumed.
More than a dozen top generals and admirals have gone since he took office, by The Associated Press’s count. And that is where there is a real practical cost to removing Hegseth.
A defense secretary requires Senate confirmation. Federal law guides what happens in the meantime. Under Title 10, the deputy secretary, who is himself a Senate-confirmed civilian appointee, acts for the secretary when the office falls vacant.
So the risk is not that an unconfirmed official takes charge of the Pentagon. It is that a caretaker runs a war above a chain of command whose civilian posts are unfilled, for as long as the Senate needs to process a nominee.
Floor time is finite, the Senate has only just returned, and a midterm calendar is closing behind it. Meanwhile, Hegseth is consolidating control of the Pentagon .
The year of firings that made him a political liability also left him the one confirmed official who knows where everything is and what is going on. Indispensable is too strong. But he’s not far off.
Of course, war is no protection at all if history is anything to go by. We even have an example from a relatively recent unpopular war in the Middle East to use.
Former GOP President George W. Bush removed Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary in November 2006 with Iraq going worse than anything now facing Trump, and said new leadership could bring a "fresh perspective" at a critical moment.
But take a closer look at how Bush did it. He announced Rumsfeld’s departure on November 8, the day after the midterms, and named Robert Gates in the same breath.
The Senate confirmed Gates on December 6 , 95 votes to two, and he was sworn in on December 18; four weeks from announcement to a confirmed defense secretary, in a lame-duck chamber, weeks after his party lost the midterms.
Bush could move that fast because he had three things Trump does not.
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