Three whole weeks had gone by without Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth firing a leading U.S. military official during a war, but the streak came to an abrupt end on Wednesday afternoon. MS NOW reported:
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan is leaving the Trump administration, the Pentagon announced [Wednesday].
‘Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately,’ Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement [Wednesday] afternoon.
MS NOW went on to confirm that Phelan, who had spent Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill talking to members of Congress about the Navy’s budget proposal, was in fact fired, driven in part by his poor relationship with Hegseth.
A related report in The Wall Street Journal described what sounded like a classic behind-the-scenes power struggle, with the Pentagon chief having grown frustrated by Phelan’s “close relationship” with Donald Trump: “Phelan regularly chats with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club, just down the street from his own Florida home, and told lawmakers last year that he exchanges texts with the president about shipbuilding in the middle of the night.”
The same article, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that Hegseth “worked to undermine Phelan” after he “pitched the idea for a modern battleship directly to Trump, bypassing Hegseth.”
But stepping back, the defense secretary’s insecurities are just a small piece of a larger, troubling story.
First, it’s worth emphasizing that Phelan was a curious choice for Navy secretary in the first place. He never served in the Navy and had no connection to the Navy or the U.S. Armed Forces before the president tapped him for the role. The gig appears to have been a reward for being Trump’s pal who helped raise a lot of money for the Republican’s 2024 campaign.
Second, the timing of his ouster is extraordinary: Barely a week after the administration announced a naval blockade in the Middle East, the Pentagon ousted its Navy secretary.
Third, Trump has had a rather extraordinary run of Navy secretaries during his tenure. In the president’s first term, six different men held the role — the most in American history across a single term — and with Phelan gone, the list continues to grow even longer.
Fourth, let’s not overlook the fact that Phelan was fired for reportedly upsetting Hegseth, as opposed to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. As viewers of “The Rachel Maddow Show” might recall, Phelan was listed in Epstein’s flight logs and appeared to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Epstein. These revelations reached the public two months ago, though Team Trump quickly shrugged them off.
And finally, there’s the overall scope of the Pentagon purge. Just three weeks before Phelan’s ouster, Hegseth also fired his Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, the Army’s top officer, even as the war in Iran raged on. MS NOW confirmed that two other Army generals were fired alongside George: Gen. David Hodne, the head of Army Transformation and Training Command, and Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the 26th chief of chaplains.
Those developments came on the heels of Hegseth forcing out Col. Dave Butler, who worked closely with George, which came after the defense secretary parted ways with three-star Lt. Gen. Joe McGee, which came just two weeks after the public learned about Adm. Alvin Holsey resigning as head of the U.S. Southern Command, reportedly at Hegseth’s request.
Complicating matters further is the sheer volume of U.S. military leaders who have left Hegseth’s Defense Department through firings or resignations. Just days before Holsey stepped down at Southern Command, the Pentagon chief fired Navy chief of staff Jon Harrison. (His ouster roughly coincided with two high-profile military retirements — Gen. Bryan Fenton, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, and Gen. Thomas Bussiere, a top Air Force commander — though it’s unclear whether their departures had anything to do with Hegseth.)
There was no ambiguity, however, when in late August the defense secretary fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw the Naval Special Warfare Command.
Four days earlier, Gen. David Allvin, the chief of staff of the Air Force, was also shown the door.
Recommended
The broader purge also includes Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, who was both the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency; Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. James Slife, former vice chief of staff of the Air Force; Adm. Linda Fagan, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard; Adm. Lisa Franchetti; Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short; Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, the Army’s top military lawyer; Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, the Air Force’s top military lawyer; and Navy Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO’s military committee.
Political scientist Caitlin Talmadge, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who specializes in foreign policy and military operations, recently noted via social media, “Firing senior officers for cause is one thing. Firing them repeatedly on this scale and with no explanation is unprecedented in our nation’s history.”
The consequences matter: There are growing concerns that a scandal-plagued former Fox News host is destabilizing the U.S. military.
In fact, the New York Times reported in November that Hegseth had fired or sidelined dozens of officials “with little explanation,” creating “an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust” within the department. Politico published a similar report the month before, noting that the secretary’s firings have “injected a fresh wave of fear into the Pentagon over the cost of speaking up and who might be next.”
About a year ago, five former defense secretaries, including retired Gen. Jim Mattis, Donald Trump’s first defense secretary, condemned the pattern of firings as “reckless.” Their joint letter, addressed to Congress, asked the House and Senate to hold “immediate hearings to assess the national security implications” of the dismissals. Hegseth and the administration appear to have ignored those concerns; the purge is still going on; and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have scheduled no such hearings.
Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who served as a Marine officer in Iraq and now serves on the House Armed Services Committee, spoke to Politico about Hegseth’s purges, which the congressman described as politically motivated.
“That’s a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military,” Moulton said. “That’s the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea.”
The Massachusetts Democrat made those comments last May. The problem is far worse now.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post