President Obama’s team is suggesting that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had to go because he doesn’t have the skill set to run the military during such turbulent times.

“When Secretary Hagel was first nominated for this job . . . the threat that was posed by ISIL was not nearly as significant as it is now,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, per the Daily Mail.

You might infer from that statement that Hagel’s dovish leanings and his intention of overseeing the downsizing of the Pentagon budget and avoiding another war made Obama think that he’s not equipped to handle the Islamic State.

And yet, on Hagel’s most notable disagreement with Obama, Hagel was right and the president was wrong.

“He at one point called ISIS an ‘imminent threat to every interest we have,’ contradicting the President’s comments just months before that the group was simply ‘junior varsity,’” as CNN noted.

And now, the White House is using the fact that the Islamic State is definitely not a JV team to justify Hagel’s ouster. “Another secretary might be better suited to meet those challenges,” as Earnest put it.​