President Donald Trump is nothing if not a mercurial boss. One day, he loves his appointees, the next, he’s throwing them under the proverbial bus. Just ask Kristi Noem, the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who was axed by Trump earlier this month after a disastrous congressional hearing amid a long list of public missteps.
Defense Chief Pete Hegseth is now finding himself in that very same boat.
Trump took a very weird jab at Hegseth during a Cabinet Meeting at the White House on Thursday, March 26, causing critics to speculate that Hegseth’s days are numbered.
Trump seemed to be duplicitously praising Hegseth out of one side of his mouth, but was clearly insinuating that his job could be in trouble.
“He will be fired within a month,” one viewer predicted.
The president started by heaping praise on Hegseth, a former Fox News host whom Trump appointed to lead the largest military on the planet despite opposition that he was too inexperienced, before veering in the completely opposite direction.
“Pete Hegseth, who was born for this role. I mean, he’s doing a great job,” Trump began before it all went south on Hegseth.
“They gave him a hard time,’ Trump stated without identifying who he was talking about.
“I’ll tell you, somebody came up to me yesterday, gave you a very hard time, said, ‘You know, I made a mistake,’” Trump shockingly crowed as an uncomfortable Hegseth squirmed beside him and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting on the other side of Trump, sheepishly looked the other way.
“Ah… Marco and Pete have the sads today,” one eagle-eyed viewer wrote.
“So, when I tell you who, you’re not even going to believe it. He said he gave you such a nasty hard time,” the president prattled on.
“But you’re doing, you’re doing great,” Trump simpered as he patted Hegseth on the arm like he was patting a good dog on the head.
Then, as if trying to convince himself, he repeated, “I mean, he’s doing a great job. They gave him a hard time.”
This is the second time in a week that Trump seems to be preparing to make Hegseth his fall guy for Trump’s war on Iran, which has already left 13 Americans dead, dozens injured, and killed more than 2,000 Iranians, many of them women and children.
“He’s soft launching throwing him under the bus…,” another viewer wrote.
Amid dismal poll numbers on both Trump’s popularity and the ongoing war with Tehran, now in its fifth week, Trump seemed to directly blame Hegseth for the worsening quagmire in the Middle East on Monday, March 23, at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, on the president’s ongoing National Guard crime-fighting initiative in the city.
As the president continues sending mixed messages and shifting justifications for the military strike on Iran and the endgame, he slyly threw out a whole new explanation for how it started.
“Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, clearly putting the blame for starting the war squarely on Hegseth’s shoulders.
The whispers about Hegseth’s future in the Trump administration have only been growing louder
Massachusetts Democratic congressman Seth Moulton said during an interview on MS Now that plenty of GOP lawmakers have told him behind closed doors that they want Hegseth out.
“Behind the scenes, Republicans cannot wait to get rid of this guy,” Moulton said without naming names.
“There’s a long list, Moulton said. ‘Many of them are on the Armed Services Committee, but the point is none of them will say it in public. None of them have the courage to say any of this in public,” he continued.
“They’re totally cowed by Donald Trump and that’s just so pathetic,” Moulton added.
Hegseth’s public missteps are starting to pile up, starting almost immediately after he first took control of the Pentagon with a stunning scandal now known as SignalGate.
Hegseth used a public Signal chat group to message others in the group about sensitive military information, and then national security adviser Michael Waltz accidentally invited a journalist into the chat.
Earlier this month, a new jaw-dropping report from the government watchdog group Open Books revealed that Hegseth blew through a whopping $93 billion in one month alone last September, and most of the money had nothing to do with defense programs.
Among the expenses flagged were millions spent on luxury food purchases. According to the watchdog, the Pentagon spent roughly $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tails, and $15.1 million on ribeye steak. Between March and October of last year alone, more than $7 million was spent on crab purchases.
