Showdown among the Republicans: Hegseth under fire, impeachment proceedings underway
The Pentagon chief has come under fire over the war and the election defeat. Trump defends him: ‘He’s done a brilliant job.’ Rumours, later denied, about Rubio’s possible resignation
Donald Trump continues to defend Pete Hegseth. But it is he, the head of the Pentagon, who is the first of the White House’s staunchest loyalists set to be sacked, one way or another. “I hear all sorts of things, I get phone calls, but I don’t understand why: Pete is doing a brilliant job, and I fully intend to keep him in his post,” Trump said yesterday, reaffirming his confidence in the former Fox News presenter who has been put in charge of the world’s most powerful armed forces.
Following the defeat in the mid-term elections, it was Vice-President JD Vance who initiated the reckoning within the administration and the Republican Party, going so far as to challenge Trump himself, and pointing to the war in Iran as the main reason for the Americans’ discontent: ‘We all know why we lost; it was the war in Iran that caused us to lose. We did not give sufficient weight to the difficulties faced by Americans due to the constant rises in prices,’ said Vance, adding that ‘it wasn’t worth it’ and that ‘any discussion about where we go from here must now start from these facts’.
The accusations levelled by Vance, who presents himself as the true leader of the MAGA right, may already be looking ahead to what will happen after Trump. They certainly mark the start of the race amongst Republicans for the 2028 presidential election, in which the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and perhaps Florida’s conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, also appear keen to take part. Rumours circulated in Washington yesterday about Rubio’s possible resignation, with him reportedly ready to step down to distance himself from the current administration and set his sights on the White House more decisively. But Rubio himself denied the rumours overnight: “My plan,” he said, “is to stay on until the end of my term.” DeSantis, in the wake of the defeat, chose very harsh words to criticise the Republican Party: “Let’s be clear, these results tell us that the party is on the verge of collapse.” And Ted Cruz – a Republican senator from Texas with presidential ambitions – also came down hard: “It’s worse than Watergate; we haven’t learnt a thing; tariffs have made everything too expensive; and the war with Iran,” he said, “has dragged on for far too long.”
After more than eight months of war, Trump is still weighing up whether to launch a new major offensive against Iran or to opt for a diplomatic solution: aware that he has achieved little or nothing so far.
Added to the international conflicts (including relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia) in the blue wave that swept through the White House are the battles over tariffs, violence against immigrants by ICE officers, the rejection of data centres by many communities, and the lack of transparency in relations with Big Tech, as well as corruption and conflicts of interest within the party, the administration and the president’s own family.
