Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's chances of becoming the first member to leave President Donald Trump's cabinet have doubled in recent days, according to a new analysis by CNN's Harry Enten.
The Pentagon chief has become embroiled in another scandal after sources told the Washington Post he directed Adm. Frank Bradley to leave no survivors in a missile attack on an alleged drug smuggling boat, and Enten dug into new polling on public attitudes toward Hegseth on "CNN News Central."
"This is not the first time that we have covered Pete Hegseth, and there's a reason why, and that is because he has, simply put, not been a popular guy in the American electorate," Enten said. "I mean, Pete Hegseth's net favorability in the last year. There have been no polls, no polls in which his net favorability has been positive. Every single poll that I could find in the Roper Center archives has his net favorability in the negative from when Donald Trump first nominated him nearly a year ago.
"Every single poll has found that the American people are more likely to dislike than like him, and the first poll that was taken found that the plurality of Americans said that the United States Senate should not confirm him to the post of secretary of defense."
"No polls – zero, zero, zero, zero, zero," Enten added.
Secretaries of defense get so little attention that polling outfits don't typically survey public opinion about them, but Hegseth has been the subject of at least 10 in less than a year, Enten said.
"This is extremely unusual for a defense secretary to be generating this much interest, especially when we're not at a time of war," Enten said. "You have to go all the way back to Bob Gates to find this many polls asking about the popularity rating of a defense secretary, and, of course, Bob Gates served four times as long so far as Pete Hegseth then, and, of course, that was during a time of war."
All those factors, and especially this latest scandal, makes Hegseth the favorite to be first to leave Trump's cabinet, Enten said.
"This is, I think, a great chance to use the prediction market odds, chance to be the first to leave Trump's cabinet," Enten said. "Pete Hegseth on Friday, it was just 18 percent – it's now doubled. It's now doubled to 35 percent given the recent controversy, so a lot of folks out there who are putting their money where their mouth is think there's a far better chance that Pete Hegseth exits the cabinet now, being the first one."
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