Pete Hegseth Is Destined to Be Trump’s Midterm Fall Guy

“Listen, Gutman, we’ve absolutely got to give them a victim. There’s no way out of it. Let’s give them the punk.” He nodded pleasantly at the boy in the doorway. “He actually did shoot both of them—Thursby and Jacobi—didn’t he? Anyway, he’s made to order for the part. Let’s pin the necessary evidence on him and turn him over to them.”—Sam Spade to Kasper Gutman in The Big Sleep, Dashiell Hammett, 1930This scene from Dashiell Hammett’s great crime novel, and, of course, the classic Humphrey Bogart film made from it in 1941, has been running through my head as I contemplate what will happen if the Democrats, as expected, regain the House and Senate. Trump will of course claim that the elections were rigged, and attempt all kinds of chicanery to overturn them. But he will also be looking for someone to blame for his misfortune, and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth is, as Spade says, “made to order for the part.” He even looks a little like Elisha Cook Jr., who played Wilmer, the jittery young hood whom Spade proposes to be the fall guy.Trump always needs a fall guy. After the 2018 midterms, in which Democrats picked up 40 seats and regained a House majority, the role fell to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump had been itching to fire over the Russiagate investigation. Within a few weeks, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also “resigned” under a cloud of scandal. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis left office around the same time, not because Trump was displeased with Mattis but because Mattis was displeased with Trump. “We’re looking at a lot of different things, including the Cabinet,” Trump said the day after the 2018 election. “You know, it’s very common after the midterms. I didn’t want to do anything before the midterms.”The most obvious reason to dump Hegseth is that Trump’s Iran war enraged voters by driving up oil prices. Less than one month into the war, Trump was already positioning himself to blame his defense secretary if it went badly. “I called a lot of our great people,” Trump said at a public appearance with Hegseth in Tennessee, “and Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, ‘Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’” Ouch! The Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef and Jonathan Lemire reported on November 1 that Trump was asking political allies “about the job performances of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine.” But the knives are out much more for Hegseth. He “is good at telling the president what he wants to hear,” one outside Trump adviser told The Atlantic. But now, Youssef and Lemire write, Trump is “searching for a scapegoat, and has focused on those who had told him that a war with Iran would be quick and decisive.”Congress can’t stand Hegseth. That articles of impeachment have been drawn up for Hegseth is perhaps no great distinction. The same happened to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. But in Hegseth’s case, the impeachment resolution was introduced by Hegseth’s fellow Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Massie introduced his impeachment bill as a privileged resolution, which meant the House was required to vote on it within two days. Fearing it would actually pass, House Speaker Mike Johnson called an early campaign-season recess to kill it. Last week, Massie told a reporter that he would reintroduce this resolution after the midterms. “Trump should fire Hegseth to avoid Hegseth’s impeachment,” Massie said on X.Hegseth is loathed also by the military. As The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling reported November 2, a survey by the veterans’ group Common Defense Civic Engagement found that 53 percent of active-duty service members want him gone, and 45 percent said Hegseth’s policies have caused them to consider leaving sooner than otherwise. In August, The Washington Post’s Alex Horton and Tara Copp reported that “the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the four-star commanders overseeing U.S. operations throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America” warned Hegseth that long-term operations in Iran were unsustainable. Hegseth’s response to such criticism has been to push out roughly two dozen generals and admirals, according to The Atlantic’s Youssef. These, Max Boot of The Washington Post wrote in a “Hegseth must go” column November 2, have been Hegseth’s “most dangerous and destabilizing actions.” Another reason for Trump to unload Hegseth after the midterm elections is that, as I’ve noted previously, Hegseth’s reported attempt to make a blood-money investment in defense stocks prior to the Iran war is the lowest-hanging investigative fruit the Democrats possess against any Trump Cabinet member. According to the Financial Times, Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley approached BlackRock about making a “multimillion-dollar investment.” BlackRock, immediately anticipating a legal inquiry down the road, flagged the communication internally. That means there’s a paper trail that can be subpoenaed and, in all likelihood, cooperative witnesses at BlackRock, who will not wish to have investigative guns turned on themselves for being uncooperative. Hegseth has denied the FT report, but BlackRock has absolutely no reason to protect him.An added benefit to such an investigation would be the opportunity to get a peek at Hegseth’s personal finances, which give every impression, from a distance, of being scarily chaotic. Despite making millions at Fox News, the twice-divorced Hegseth pays a $19,000-per-month mortgage on a $3.2 million house in Tennessee that he clearly can’t afford. The outrageous size of the mortgage strongly suggests Hegseth was mysteriously illiquid when he made the purchase in 2022. That, in turn, might explain why he tried to make a multimillion-dollar score on the Iran war. (Hegseth’s net worth, per Forbes, is a comparatively modest $3 million.) Hegseth can’t sell the Tennessee house if he wants to be a senator from Tennessee, a prospect in which he’s shown interest. If Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn wins her gubernatorial bid on November 3, there’s talk that she will appoint Hegseth to replace her in the Senate. Trump would likely be more grateful even than Hegseth. For his part, Hegseth wouldn’t have to face the voters for another two years, by which time perhaps they’d have forgotten why he got run out of Washington. Or perhaps this would become an occasion for the Democrats to pick up yet another red-state Senate seat in 2028. Did I mention that Hegseth’s chief of staff, Rick Buria, rather mysteriously never got fired after he went around blabbing that Hegseth—who has a bad history with alcohol (he denies it) and who promised at his confirmation hearing to give it up—was back on the sauce? Hegseth has fired people for quite a lot less. Trump, who is a teetotaler, has a special contempt for drunks because his brother, Fred Jr., was one. No matter what your politics are, Hegseth has “fall guy” written all over him. Trump should make like Kasper Gutman in The Big Sleep and tell Spade: “You can have him.” That will leave plenty of other Trump catastrophes for Democrats to deal with. But at least this one will be over.