Hegseth comes under more fire from Trump America First ally

WASHINGTON – US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing growing criticism for the unpopular Iran war that he championed, with a former top Trump administration foreign policy official calling for his ouster after Nov 7’s GOP midterm election defeat.President Donald Trump should “end the Iran war and stop listening to the warmongers”, Fred Fleitz, chief of staff at the National Security Council in Trump’s first term, wrote in an opinion column published on Nov 6.Doing so means negotiating an exit and firing Hegseth, whom he called “the face of a war most Americans no longer support”.Fleitz, now in a top job at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, compared the situation with President George W. Bush’s decision to fire Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after Republicans lost both houses of Congress in 2006 over the unpopular Iraq war.His column appeared on American Greatness, a website published by Chris Buskirk, a long-time ally of Vice-President J.D. Vance.He also called for the firing of White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as the architects of Trump’s unpopular tariff policy, which he called a “costly failure that has hurt the American people and damaged relations with our friends and allies”.Navarro and Lutnick did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Nov 6.The column reveals the depth of Republican angst after a brutal midterm sweep by Democrats who took solid control of both chambers of Congress.On Nov 6, Trump announced he was replacing his White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with her deputy Stephen Miller.It also follows an extraordinary statement that Vance posted on social media in which he sought to distance himself from the defeats by acknowledging the Iran war was the key issue that sunk his party at the polls.Fleitz’s piece comes before members of Congress are set to vote on a motion to impeach Hegseth as soon as next week, before newly elected members are even seated.On Nov 5, Hegseth posted a six-minute video on X defending his tenure.He said representative Thomas Massie, the outgoing Kentucky Republican leading the impeachment charge, was a “disgruntled, defeated congressman” who has filed “sham articles of impeachment against yours truly”.Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a frequent Trump antagonist, responded to that post with a reference to Trump’s former homeland security secretary, saying “Cabinet secretaries shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer dollars on campaign style videos. Kristi Noem learned that the hard way”.Noem was moved out of the Cabinet by Trump after reportedly spending more than US$200 million (S$256.52 million) on an ad campaign that mainly featured herself.“This is about you,” Tillis, a senator from North Carolina, went on in response to Hegseth.“The incompetence you’ve displayed, the bad advice you’ve given to president, and your shameful and embarrassing episodes from firing our top generals to texting war plans to reporters.”In a statement on Nov 6 that was identical to one issued a day earlier, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth “will not back down or be deterred by politicians seeking to score partisan points or launch phony investigations where no wrongdoing exists”. BLOOMBERG