'Gonna take a fiasco': Hegseth's ouster predicted by ex-Trump staffer

A Republican senator called on President Donald Trump to replace Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his "inept" leadership, but a former White House staffer predicted the situation would need to get much worse before he would take that step.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) went public with his concerns after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announced his resignation this week over friction with Hegseth, who has pushed out other senior military officials, and former Trump communications director Mike Dubke told "CNN This Morning" that Trump would not replace his Pentagon chief at this point.

"I think it's goingto, it's going to take,unfortunately, some mess-up bythe U.S. military for thepresident to turn around andsay, 'You know what, Pete, it'stime to go,' because all theother things that he is doing,all of the the in terms of beinglethal, in terms of the videos,in terms of the recruitment, Imean, the White House is goingto talk about how great therecruitment is, and they'reabsolutely right," Dubke said.

The U.S. military has hit its recruitment goals for this fiscal year and enlistment reached a 15-year high, but Dubke said that obscured other institutional failures under Hegseth's leadership.

"It's gonna take some fiasco, I think,unfortunately, for this White House to decide that Pete Hegseth is not the leader thatwe need," Dubke said, "and the unfortunatepart of that, and I'll be just,I'll end here, is that I don'tknow how long it will take tothen bring back the military, towhat, to an operationalforce, given how much talent hasbeen eroded."

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