Turns out confirming a Fox News host to run the Pentagon has consequences. Senate Republicans — including the ones who voted for him — are reportedly losing patience with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the Iran war rolls on with no exit in sight and his purge of military leadership keeps raising eyebrows.
The gripes: nobody in the administration seems to have seen the Strait of Hormuz shutdown coming, gas prices have spiked as a result, and Iran's strikes on Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia — plus Houthi attacks in the Red Sea — apparently caught the Pentagon flat-footed, too, The Hill reports.
Sen. Thom Tillis, who was the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth and clearly regrets it, didn't hold back: he's lost confidence entirely, calling Hegseth erratic and accusing him of forcing out some of the department's most experienced leaders. He piled on further, describing Hegseth as insecure, out of his depth running a large organization, and a compulsive micromanager — and says that sentiment is spreading fast through the Senate GOP conference.
An anonymous Republican senator backed that up, saying the loss of confidence is coming straight from inside the Pentagon and trickling up to the Hill.
Susan Collins had her own moment of concern over the forced retirement of Europe's top Army commander, Chris Donahue, calling the trend of ousted officials "deeply troubling" and demanding more answers on what the actual endgame is. Shelley Moore Capito thinks the public's fatigue with the war is setting in, and Joni Ernst is fixated on the price tag — Hegseth claims $37.5 billion. Still, Moody's Analytics puts the real number closer to $132 billion, which is the kind of gap that tends to get Congress's attention.
Tillis also raised the pointed possibility that the generals Hegseth pushed out might've actually seen the Hormuz and Houthi complications coming — had they still been around to say so. He topped it off by comparing the Pentagon's internal power struggles to Game of Thrones, accusing Hegseth of wanting to run the whole show himself.
Then there's the other running story: Hegseth quietly blocking Navy promotions for women and officers of color — including a 30-year veteran currently leading a carrier strike group — without ever explaining why. Add that to the two dozen-plus generals and admirals he's sidelined or pushed out, and a pattern starts to look less like a coincidence and more like a mission statement.
Who knew that Pete's anti-woke, anti-DEI bullfuckingshit was just a distraction from his own ineptitude? I know - maybe he can struggle through ten more manly-man push-ups for a photo-op again, and that will change everything. And RFK Jr. can poorly demonstrate how to do squats to distract us from Americans literally shitting themselves from explosive diarrhea.
