'He still has a job': GOP strategist warns 'egregious' Trump official on thin ice for now

Maura Gillespie, former adviser to then-speaker of the House John Boehner, slammed defense secretary Pete Hegseth as “pretty egregious” after President Donald Trump said he "had a talk with him” about his performance thus far.

The president revealed the conversation during a newly published interview with The Atlantic, saying it had been a "positive talk," and "CNN News Central" host John Berman asked Gillespie to comment on the topic.

“Maura is this a glass half empty or glass half full for Pete Hegseth?” Berman asked. “The president basically says that he doesn't have it together yet, that he's going to get it together, or is it half full in the sense that he still has a job?

“For Pete Hegseth he still has a job this morning,” said Gillespie, the founder and principal of BlueStack Strategies. “But for Donald Trump, he doesn't need this distraction or essentially making him look bad, right? He doesn't want his administration or anyone else to be taking away from what he is trying to show the world and the American people [what] he can do for them.”

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“Unfortunately, I think that there are certainly some downsides and some things that people are frustrated by," Gillespie added. "But certainly the inequities and the real lack of experience that Pete Hegseth has shown time and time again, even in the two or three months he's been in the job, is pretty, pretty egregious."

She was joined by Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, who noted Trump’s poll numbers are not great and “he's trying to get [Hegseth] off of his plate and get it focused on things that are positive around him.

“I want to put up one of the poll numbers that Chuck was just talking about there," Berman said. "There are all kinds of polls to mark the president's first 100 days in office, which is officially tomorrow, and the CNN poll just came out. I just think one number that encapsulates everything is his approval rating among independents, which is at 31 percent, 67 percent disapprove. That's low, Maura. To put it in perspective, that's about what his approval rating was in January of 2021 after the insurrection. So this is really, these are bad numbers for independents. Why do you think it's happening?”

“Because of the economy,” Gillespie said. “I think that there's been this decline in confidence that he is going to actually do what he promised to do in that regard, and so independents who wanted to vote for him because they wanted a change and they were not impressed by the Democratic Party [are questioning that decision].”

She added, “Republicans at large still poll higher on doing something about the economy than Democrats do. But this is a sign that independents are no longer as confident in Donald Trump to address it, since he thus far has not.”

Watch the full interaction:

- YouTubeyoutu.be