The morning after Republicans got flattened at the polls, the President of the United States started working the phones to ask people whether his Defense Secretary should keep his job. The Vice President, meanwhile, went on X and announced that "the reason we lost is the war." Nothing says total confidence like a cabinet-wide game of who's the designated scapegoat.
The Morning After Phone Tree
According to CBS News, multiple sources say President Trump has been asking advisers around him, and people on the phone, whether Pete Hegseth should stay at the Pentagon. This is the political equivalent of texting the group chat "is it weird that I'm still mad at Kevin?" after you already know the answer.
The asking is the story. A president who feels fine about his Defense Secretary does not canvass his inner circle about the guy's future the day after an electoral wipeout. He just keeps tweeting. The fact that this is happening at all tells you the polling data landed somewhere between "bad" and "call the fire department."
To be fair, sources also said Trump hasn't decided to replace Hegseth. That's the sort of reassurance you get when a doctor tells you the tumor hasn't been named yet.
Vance Says the Quiet Part on X
Then there's JD Vance. In what CBS News described as a lengthy post on X on Wednesday morning, the vice president wrote: "The reason we lost is the war."
Read that again. The second-in-command of the Trump administration looked at a catastrophic election night and pinned it on the Iran war. Not the economy. Not the tariffs. Not the flailing. The war that this administration started and has spent months cheering on from the podium.
It is genuinely remarkable to watch the guy who has to share a ticket with the commander in chief of that war point at it in public and say, essentially, that's what did us in. You could call it candor. You could also call it a man lining up his alibi for 2028. Both can be true.
Someone Else Gets to Be the Fall Guy
Not everyone in the building wants Hegseth to be the only name on the casualty list. CBS News reports that some White House aides have predicted the blame will also land on Adm. Brad Cooper, who runs U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both played big roles in guidance on the Iran war.
So the staff is already drafting the blame distribution chart. Politicians who wanted the war are now quietly pointing at the uniformed officers who carried it out. Remember this the next time anyone in this administration talks about "supporting the troops." Supporting the troops apparently has a shelf life of roughly one bad Tuesday.
The military leadership is being offered up as a possible fall guy for a war that civilians in the White House ordered. If that doesn't make your stomach turn a little, check your pulse.
The DeSantis Floating Device
Now for the part that reads like a pitch for a very bad political thriller. One source told CBS News that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is being floated as a possible replacement for Hegseth. The theory: DeSantis could clear Senate confirmation during the lame-duck period, then take the Pentagon job when his term as governor ends on Jan. 5.
Think about the logistics. A governor gets confirmed to run the Defense Department in the same few weeks that the party that just got crushed still controls the Senate, so that they can jam him through before the new Congress arrives. It is a beautifully cynical bit of calendar math. Get him in before the incoming majority can say no.
Whether DeSantis wants it is another question. Whether he'd want to inherit the Pentagon in the middle of an unpopular war that the Vice President just publicly called an electoral albatross is another, and frankly funnier, one.
Impeachment Is Now on the Menu
Here's the wrinkle that should keep Hegseth up at night. Before the election, Democrats were already trying to impeach him. CBS News notes that the likelihood of an impeachment effort could rise now that Democrats hold strong majorities in both chambers.
That changes the math. Hegseth is no longer a guy who can rely on a friendly Congress to wave away his latest controversy. He now faces a legislative branch with subpoena power and a long list of reasons to use it. If the President wants to avoid months of hearings with Hegseth in the witness chair, dumping him is the cleanest exit.
The White House line, delivered by spokeswoman Anna Kelly, is that Trump "has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth." She praised the operations in Iran and Venezuela and cheered Hegseth's efforts to reverse the Biden Pentagon's focus on "DEI and woke ideology." Notice what that statement doesn't say. It doesn't say he's staying.
The Dingo Take
Imagine a Democratic administration getting walloped in the midterms, and the morning after, the president starts calling around asking whether his Secretary of Defense should be thrown overboard while the vice president tells the world that the war was the reason everyone lost. Fox News would run a three-day marathon called "Chaos in the White House." Cable panels would use the word "collapse." Every Republican senator would be demanding hearings by lunch. When it's this crowd, the response is a press statement about "full confidence" and a trial balloon about a governor.
Here's the actual story underneath the personnel drama. The war is why they lost, and the Vice President said so out loud. The President's own number two just told the country that the Iran war cost the party control of Congress. Firing Hegseth does not change that. Swapping in DeSantis does not change that. You can rotate every name on the org chart, and the voters who punished you for the war will still have punished you for the war.
The scapegoating is the tell. Nobody in this administration is asking whether the war was a mistake. They're asking who should take the fall for it. That is how you know the lesson from Tuesday night has not been learned, and will not be, until the next one.
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