A veteran political journalist has put a name on Donald Trump’s next Cabinet casualty, and he didn’t hedge on the timing.
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Writing on his Substack Tuesday, Paul Waldman predicted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be either fired or forced to resign before long, which would make him the third Cabinet secretary to fall in Trump’s second term.
“In a cabinet full of grifters and nincompoops, Hegseth stands out for his combination of belligerent buffoonishness and rampaging incompetence,” Waldman wrote. “As ill-advised as it is to make predictions in politics, we’ll offer this one: Hegseth will be the next Trump cabinet secretary to be fired or forced to resign, and it won’t be long.”
Waldman argued that the final push won’t come from policy failures, but rather from humiliating the boss.
“Being bad at your job won’t get you the boot in Donald Trump’s government; for that, you have to become enough of a public embarrassment that he decides you’re reflecting poorly on him,” he wrote. “And Hegseth is just about there.”
The prediction comes amid open turmoil at the Pentagon. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned last week after months of clashes with Hegseth, NPR reported. On his way out, Driscoll warned Trump that Hegseth’s chaotic firings of senior officers were “hurting the force and shrinking the pool of officers available for future senior commands,” according to ABC News.
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More than two dozen top military officials have been pushed out or forced into early retirement under Hegseth, The Washington Post noted, with the defense secretary also blocking the promotions of at least 45 more.
Furthermore, the USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in Thailand last week visibly streaked with rust after more than nine months at sea, following weeks of family accounts describing food shortages, moldy showers and sagging morale aboard the carrier, CBS News reported.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top House Democratic appropriator, alleged Thursday that the Pentagon secretly signed an interagency agreement that could siphon billions from the National Institutes of Health to shore up its own war spending.
Two Cabinet secretaries have already been shown the exit. Kristi Noem was dismissed as Homeland Security secretary in March after bipartisan criticism over a $220 million ad campaign starring herself, luxury jet purchases and a deadly immigration operation in Minneapolis. Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired in April amid Trump’s frustration over how the Epstein records were being managed by the DOJ.
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