All posts tagged "John Phelan"

Newsmax host Greg Kelly unloaded on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he unexpectedly fired Navy Secretary John Phelan.

Earlier this week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin suggested Hegseth ousted Phelan after the Navy secretary insisted on complying with a judge who said that punishing Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) over a video calling on service members to disobey illegal orders would be unconstitutional.

"Hegseth wanted Kelly, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut, brought back onto active duty and stripped of his rank," Griffin reported. ...

A New York Times report on Thursday revealed more details behind what led to President Donald Trump's decision to fire Navy Secretary John Phelan.

Trump apparently wanted Phelan to deliver on building a new class of battleships by 2028, but "the timeline was nearly impossible," according to The Times.

Trump had even bragged about the planned ships, saying just days before Christmas at Mar-a-Lago, what he anticipated they would be. ...

The former Trump-appointed Navy Secretary who suddenly departed amid a naval blockade in Iran didn't believe Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth when he was told to leave, a senior White House correspondent reported.

Hegseth "did the firing," CNN White House correspondent Kristin Holmes reported on Thursday, by asking former Navy Secretary John Phelan "to resign or be fired." Phelan resigned on Wednesday in what seemed to be a sudden and unexplained departure, but Holmes said that "there was an enormous amount of tension between Phelan and Pete Hegesth."

Meanwhile, Phelan and Trump "actually had a pretty good relationship," Holmes said. "He and his wife had both been donors for President Trump, so they had built a relationship on that."...

A former CIA director cautioned that recent missteps by the Trump administration in its handling of the war in Iran could spell "real trouble for the future."

Leon Panetta, the former CIA director, said on CNN on Thursday that "badly stalled" talks with Iran will make a military response more likely on both sides.

"While talks are stalemated, that could be real trouble for the future," Panetta explained. "The longer we are held back from somehow sitting down and beginning those discussions, I think the problem that I see is that the earlier the tendency to respond militarily will be."...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was reportedly concerned that President Donald Trump could dismiss him from his cabinet next, which is dictating his recent moves, an analyst said on Thursday.

Hegseth, who fired Navy Secretary John Phelan on Wednesday, has apparently started to show signs of paranoia over whether he will remain in the top Pentagon position, Tom Nichols, staff writer for The Atlantic, told MS NOW.

"I think what's going on now, and I think what you're seeing with Phelan is Hegseth is very worried that he's going to lose his job," Nichols said. "And so he's trying to repopulate the Pentagon and its environment with people who won't support him getting fired with, you know, who will stand up and say, 'I owe my job to Pete Hegseth. He's a great leader. Please, Mr. President, don't let him go.' That's one of the things.'" ...

The sudden and unexplained departure of Navy Secretary John Phelan, appointed by Trump last year, has left observers baffled and outraged, especially as war with Iran drags on with dueling naval blockades.

"We’re in the middle of a pretty important naval blockade standoff with a country we’ve threatened to destroy, so it seems like a weird time for the Secretary of the Navy to abruptly depart," wrote journalist Sarah Longwell on X. "And by 'weird' I mean, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

Journalist John Collins echoed the feeling, posting, "What the [expletive] is going on?" ...