God, the list of terrible Trump Cabinet appointees (and other positions) is as endless as the number of jobs themselves — though that's to be expected when the first, maybe only, requirement is unrequited love, along with unwavering and public support of Donald Trump as president and person.
Bessent, Blanche, Patel, Noem — one could go on and on. And yet the worst still holds his job, perhaps because Trump doesn't fire white males, perhaps because Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth actually does efficiently and perfectly perform the real task before him — pandering to Trump and persecuting those he believes deserve it — while failing at all others.
Despite the perfect overlap with Trump's Secretary of Defense job description (it is not the War Department until Congress changes it), the country and Donald Trump needed Hegseth fired long ago. He endangers American lives, ruins morale among our best, blows up our relationship with former allies, miscounts or lies about tools left to blow things up, minimizes or lies about the damage to American personnel and assets, and fails to recognize that war in 2026 doesn't align with war in 2016, even.
Hegseth's list of failures rivals Trump's list of horrific appointments. And yet, he may have barely scratched the surface of the damage he can do to this country and the world.
The aim of this column is not to review all the failures; they're well known — and many of them are listed in Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-KY) articles of impeachment filed against him Tuesday. It is to argue that the worst is yet to come. But the list of evidence that begs for termination is impressive and merits a tight review.
First and foremost, Hegseth badly underestimated the damage Iranian drones could do to U.S. bases, which were surprisingly (to him) disrupted such that CENTCOM had to rely on its base in Diego Garcia, a long, long way away. Remember this failure in particular. Additionally, Hegseth then appeared to cover up the extent of the damage from Congress and the American people, with hundreds of buildings destroyed or damaged.
Were that not enough, the DoD spent $22 billion, primarily through the use of interceptor missiles that do protect U.S. personnel from attack, to the point that we are beyond any sort of fast resupply. One is left to conclude that this obvious issue, the bottleneck in replenishment, didn't cross his mind prior to the war. Yeah, remember this one, also.
It appears that not only does Hegseth not appreciate the 2026 war dynamic, but he has apparently never read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." He has the DoD relying on $3M interceptors to protect troops from $30K-$100K drones, and that math isn't mathing in defense of troops, nor is it working; see the damage above.
As part of what might have been Hegseth's real military mission, blowing up anything he determined "smelled" like diversity, equity and inclusion, Hegseth essentially decapitated the Pentagon's most senior and effective leadership, starting with firing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown, down to blocking the promotion of two Black men and two female soldiers, on track to become one-star generals. Keep a close eye on that one.
Yes, keep that eye right here because it decimated morale in the Pentagon, which is what happens when other senior officials, presumably even the white men, understand the military needed those officers and were tired of playing political games.
That's more than enough of a list without even getting into his decision to blow operational security through Signal, or — quaintly — that we're in a stalemate with Iran with no apparent plan to "win" anytime soon. Yes, that also matters.
Let's get where we need to go. All the above leads inevitably to the reality that the world is a much more dangerous place due to Hegseth — more dangerous to American personnel, more dangerous to Americans generally, and just flat out more dangerous. "We," America and its [former] allies, are vulnerable beyond any point in recent memory.
Quite obviously, as it has in other areas, one can feel the rise of the East overtaking the American Empire, with China feeling less restrained from squeezing Taiwan. To this point, China had to really think about getting physical with Taiwan because they might lose their lives and their stuff, worried about a U.S. defensive attack. Right now, it appears we cannot competently attack Iran, never mind China.
The real-world economic impact (never mind the number of Taiwanese or Americans killed in such an attack) would be overwhelming. Taiwain supplies 90% of our most super of semi-conductors. Granted, with all the bad AI news lately, a world with fewer semi-conductors might not sound like the worst outcome, except it might shrink the global GDP by 10%.
But the military impact would go well beyond the economic impact. We look at China and see ... well, China. it looks out past its shores and feels suffocated with American military might, from South Korean partnerships, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan, down to Australia, the U.S. has controlled not only the Eastern but also the Western Pacific. Taking Taiwan would truly breakthrough a big American defensive principle.
Beyond Taiwan and China, head to Russia, Russia, Russia. While it's true that Russia cannot overtake Ukraine, that does not mean that Russia isn't probing Eastern Europe in other places, against countries much smaller and poorer than Ukraine. Russia knows that U.S. and NATO forces can't fire interceptors that don't exist.
Russia doesn't even need to fire a shot. True to the Motherland's real modus operandi, it could freely rely more on sabotage, cyberattacks, GPS jamming, airspace incursions, pressure against the Baltics, attacks on undersea infrastructure. All provocations designed to determine what NATO will tolerate and whether the U.S. will even be there, given that our president and his servant in the Pentagon love the Russian butcher currently targeting American troops over NATO democracies that had our backs in Afghanistan.
Additionally, having fumbled against Iran, the Middle East could simply blow up generally — a very bad development.
Which brings us to a more all-encompassing danger: the fact that it sure appears that Hegseth's ineptitude means the U.S. can't defend two crises at once. What if North Korea really got aggressive with its nuclear missiles, fired in any direction, or just regular artillery fired 30 miles into downtown Seoul? Russia ignores Ukraine and moves on the Baltics? What if we need to protect American soil? Guam? Alaskan Islands? Other?
Hegseth needs to go. He needs to go because of all the above but perhaps even more for the below. The countries that might otherwise help us, a Congress that might otherwise act, American military personnel that could be in a more defensive position, all suffer under his leadership.
Germany and the E.U. cannot stand him, seeing him for what he is — a clumsy drunk way out of his depth. It looks like Hegseth is almost personally ensuring that our [former] military allies have decided they can't rely on the American military even if it is properly ordered to protect overriding interests.
Congress was seemingly done with him long ago. Democrats never wanted him. Even several GOP Senators voted against his confirmation, a Secretary of Defense requiring a vice presidential tie-breaking vote for confirmation? Really? Yes, well — when the nominee is a drunk, alleged sexual attacker, inexperienced anti-DEI moron, yes. But it's so much worse now. Congress seems reluctant to invest in the Defense Department at least, in part, because it doesn't trust Hegseth to use the money properly.
All of which leaves American personnel, asked to risk their lives far from home for a cause far from clear, far more vulnerable — much of it due to Hegseth's leadership, personally.
If that isn't a deal breaker, what would it be?
Yes, yes, yes. The dealbreaker would be appearing to question Trump's greatness and leadership. But neither Noem nor Bondi ever crossed Trump and, other than being women (no small matter), they sure didn't put Americans at more risk than Pete.
Moreover, this one is a head-scratcher precisely because Hegseth succeeded so spectacularly in his one "true mission." The military was never a safe place for any American, but the Pentagon itself is now not a safe place for Black officers (or non-commissioned officers), women, LGBTQ Americans, or immigrants. And that was likely what Trump really wanted.
Not fine at all, but fine.
Given that that job is done until it's corrected by a real president, is it too much to ask that Trump fire Hegseth and appoint someone who can at least "better" manage the massive American military might while still sucking sufficiently up to Trump?
No. It is not. Trump got all the success he demanded against all common sense and sensitivity and has used up all he needed from Hegseth. Now he only needs someone just as pliant; we need one less pitiful before the pain gets even more unmanageable.
Blanche, Patel, Bennett... The list goes on and on. But one person in particular makes the globe a much more dangerous place, putting more American lives in peril. That guy, Pete Hegseth, needs to go. Before it's even more too late.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, former associate editor at Occupy Democrats, author, consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Blue Sky. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com.