Trump is stubbornly doubling down on a bad bet.
After having his block knocked off by the electorate like a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot, Donald Trump conceded to 60 Minutes’ interviewer Ross Douthat that he would likely shake things up in his cabinet. And so he has. The departure of Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff in favor of Stephen Miller suggests that, much like Conor McGregor, Trump would like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody.
In that same interview — practically in the same breath — Trump promised that he would be standing behind Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth despite Hegseth’s mishandling of the war in Iran and his exposed public position as the most fireable face of a humiliating, unending, losing conflict. Hegseth’s position was safe, Trump confidently stated — even as he hedged on whether his promised resumption of air strikes against Iran would come to pass.
I think it’s a mistake. I think Trump is stubbornly doubling down on a bad bet (not specifically the Iran war, though that is a catastrophe, but Hegseth as a lieutenant), refusing to acknowledge his error. “Pete’s a fighter, and we need fighters right now,” Trump probably thinks. (“And, my god, what a remarkably taut rump.”) Hegseth’s gung ho demeanor has seemingly obviated the reality that he has no plan in place to turn things around in the Middle East. He can only strike television-ready poses while dressed in appropriate public garb and hoping for a sudden collapse of the regime in Tehran. Trump is going to realize this sooner or later.
So Hegseth should go, in my opinion. But if you want to guarantee that Hegseth will stay, you couldn’t have done a better job of encouraging it than did the idiot (and outgoing) Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who yesterday filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth. Massie lists eight separate articles of impeachment, and, in truth, I consider at least two of them to make at least colorable claims.
Practically speaking, however, this is a pointless exercise on Massie’s part; an act of spite on his way out the door. (Trump single-handedly ensured that Massie would be primaried, and now? For hate’s sake, Trump, Thomas Massie spits his last crankish act at thee!) It won’t go anywhere in 2026, with a Republican House and Senate. Massie wants simply to stake out pride of place ahead of the arrival of a highly Democratic 120th Congress — and Hakeem Jeffries’s House — of which he will not be a part.
Come January 1, Massie will be sitting at home reading coverage of the Democrats’ (seemingly inevitable) attempts to haul Trump’s cabinet before them to account. And Trump will almost certainly be fighting hammer and tongs to defend an unworthy lieutenant, if for no better reason than he is running out of people he can fire.