A high profile member of Donald Trump's Cabinet is on the edge of losing his job after, once again, causing the White House headaches at a time when things were going well, thereby infuriating Trump's inner circle.
Pete Hegseth's unilateral decision to delay a weapons shipment to Ukraine which caught the White House by surprise, has become another black mark on his tenure as defense secretary that could lead to his ouster.
That is according to MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Jonathan Lemire who told the panel on Thursday morning that White House insiders –– including Donald Trump's powerful chief of staff Susie Wiles –– are "exasperated."
As Lemire noted, Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, got off to a rough start by not being forthcoming before his nomination hearings when he failed to let the White House know about a police report alleging sexual assault.
Since then, every time the Trump White House seems to be having a run of good news, something has come up with Hegseth that has forced the White House to scramble.
With Lemire telling co-host Joe Scarborough, "There is real anger here" over the Ukraine debacle, Scarborough pointed out, "It bears repeating and underlining that Pete Hegseth has had a history in his short term as a nominee," and accused the SecDef of exasperating people inside the White House.
"Again, lying and certainly not being forthcoming about the problems that he had had in the past about court documents. I mean, surprising the Trump transition team time and time again, then doing it again with Signalgate."
"I mean, you talk to people inside the White House like I know you have, they'll say we had a great two months and we controlled the agenda and then Pete Hegseth screwed it up with Signalgate, and now here we have it again," he added.
"You tick through just a few of the examples that really exasperated Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and others in the White House think tired of some of the mistakes from Hegseth," Lemire agreed. "Now, look, Hegseth is very popular among the MAGA base due to his time at Fox News."
"So there's there is affection there for him, but that only gets you so far if you continue to alienate the commander in chief, your time in that post may be limited," he continued. "Trump is loath to fire people so far this time around. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz was the one exception here; he wasn't popular in most Trump circles. But right now, I think that, you know, Hegseth is on a, you know, a short leash, if you will, from the Oval Office."
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