There was plenty of defiance and rhetorical venom from Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Tuesday, as the under-pressure US defence secretary gave his first news conference in six months.
Much of his ire was directed at the Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, who has brought articles of impeachment against him. Hegseth dismissed him as “one disgruntled and defeated congressman” who was leading a “farce and a stunt”.
But this was, in many ways, a news conference with an audience of one – President Donald Trump.
Again and again, Hegseth tied his fate to that of the president.
That positioning matters.
Hegseth has frequently echoed the president’s rhetoric and public statements and he did it repeatedly on Tuesday. Attacks on the media, denunciations of political enemies and even reflecting the very words the president uses.
Referring to Trump’s 2019 impeachment over a call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Hegseth described it as a “perfect phone call” – the exact formulation the president has used when discussing the issue.
But behind the defiance and these public demonstrations of loyalty to Trump, Hegseth is now in a much weaker position – and in a fight for his political life.
Republicans have just lost both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, with polls indicating the Iran war and its impact on voters’ pockets was at the heart of their unhappiness.
Vice-President JD Vance, meanwhile, has said bluntly that the war is why Republicans lost.
Asked this morning about the political consequences of the war and Vance’s comments, Hegseth avoided disagreeing openly with the vice-president. But he said the war was “not necessarily popular” but necessary – perhaps the closest he has come to accepting that Americans have soured on the enterprise.
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All of this leaves this president with an impossible dilemma.
If he opts to keep his defence secretary, it risks looking as though he has not heard the message from voters.
Fire him, and it risks looking like an admission that the Iran war has become a damaging domestic liability.
A scalp or a scapegoat, put it how you like, may be necessary if Trump is to move on.
Even the promotion of Stephen Miller to White House chief-of-staff provides less comfort than it might appear. He and Hegseth are close allies, and Hegseth today called him an “incredible American patriot”.
But Miller reportedly clinched the job after arguing that the White House needed to wind down the Iran war – putting a clear level of distance between the Pentagon and the president.
For the time being, Hegseth has the president’s backing – but as everyone knows in Washington. a full-throated endorsement from Trump can, in the blink of an eye, evaporate into nothing if a sacrifice is required.
Votes in Congress will be the focus on Tuesday as impeachment proceedings against Hegseth get under way.
But in reality, it is the president’s feelings that will likely be the ultimate arbiter of Hegseth’s political fate.
