President Donald Trump has been asking advisers whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should stay in his job after Republicans’ midterm losses, CBS News reported Wednesday, citing multiple people familiar with the discussions. No decision to replace Hegseth has been made, according to other sources cited by CBS, and the White House says Trump has “full confidence” in him.
Trump has been asking the question of advisers around him in person and by phone since Tuesday night’s losses, the sources told CBS.
Some White House aides have predicted that blame for the GOP’s midterm losses will instead be trained on Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who both played big roles in guidance on the Iran war, CBS reported.
One source told CBS that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is being floated as a possible replacement, arguing DeSantis could go through Senate confirmation in the lame-duck period and then take the post when his term as governor expires Jan. 5.
Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed the war for the defeat. “The reason we lost is the war,” he said in a lengthy post on X.
Democrats were already trying to impeach Hegseth before the election, and with Democrats holding majorities in both chambers, an impeachment push is now more likely, CBS reported.
Asked about Hegseth’s future, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump “has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth.” Kelly also praised the military operations in Iran and Venezuela and Hegseth’s efforts to reverse the Biden Pentagon’s prioritizing of “DEI and woke ideology.”
Trump himself dismissed the idea of a shake-up later Wednesday. In a post-election phone call with Fox News, he said he was not planning any major staffing changes and that the midterm results “had nothing to do with my cabinet,” the New York Post reported.
The account contrasts with Trump’s own public remarks before the election, when he told The Wall Street Journal he planned no personnel changes in his administration and backed his defense secretary. “I think he’s terrific actually,” Trump said, as previously reported by JBizNews.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, left, at a House Appropriations Committee hearing in June. Photo: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CC BY 2.0)
For now, nothing has changed at the Pentagon: no replacement process has been announced, Trump says the losses “had nothing to do with my cabinet,” and any new defense secretary would require Senate confirmation. But the reporting shows the fallout from Tuesday’s losses reaching the top ranks of the administration.
JBizNews Desk | Washington
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