How Pete Hegseth suddenly went from ‘out the door’ to safe as houses

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The defence secretary is now the face of two wars: the one against Iran, and the one against the Democrats. It’s the latter that will keep him in the job.

The conventional wisdom around the corridors of Washington a few weeks ago was that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was headed for the exit.

Indeed, speculation raged for months that President Donald Trump wasn’t happy with Hegseth. In particular, a Washington Post story from August reported that Trump and Hegseth clashed at Camp David about munitions shortages caused by the war in Iran, and why the president had apparently been misled about the problem.

It was the latest in a series of controversies that seemed to pit the Pentagon against the White House. Earlier, reports indicated Hegseth’s department had unilaterally paused weapons shipments to Ukraine and scaled back the US troop presence in Romania.

Moreover, Hegseth clashed with top military personnel, and replaced several of them. There was an air of chaos and churn around the defence secretary, and Trump acknowledged receiving complaints.

There were strong parallels with 2006, when Republican president George W. Bush fired his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the day after a devastating midterm election when the GOP lost control of both chambers.

That dismissal also took place amid the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, which had become the exact kind of quagmire that Rumsfeld famously said “I don’t do”.

Even though Hegseth was executing Trump’s orders in Iran, he loomed as a potential fall guy for a war that was never popular and grew less so after initial peace plans collapsed.

But the midterm election results – delivering control of both chambers to the Democrats, with big majorities – changed the equation.

The Trump White House is now under siege, and preparing to fight. Trump has said so himself, and appointed hardline loyalist Stephen Miller as his chief of staff, replacing the more establishment Republican Susie Wiles.

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