SECOND TERM SABOTAGE?

The State Department and Department of Defense are in the midst of a good ol’ fashioned knife fight between Trump loyalists and the establishment.

There have been multiple high-profile exits, rumors of scandal, and seemingly endless finger pointing as to who is — and who isn’t — executing Trump’s vision.

At the State Department, the conflict centers around Trump’s desire to largely end USAID while moving some critical functions underneath Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Multiple Trump administration officials told Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese that Rubio and his hand-picked aides are being pressured by moderates in the Senate — namely, Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, and Mitch McConnell — to defy Trump and keep larger portions of USAID intact. The officials claimed Rubio is sensitive to his former colleagues’ concerns and did not want to fully dismantle USAID when asked to do so by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“[Rubio] is getting calls all the time from his senators … when we would get a call from a senator or congressman, all of a sudden Mike Needham and Dan Holler are like, ‘oh my gosh, you better do this. You better get this member what they want,’” one Trump administration official told the Caller. “They don’t even flinch when the President issues an executive order. To the contrary, it’s as though it never happened.”

Trump loyalists are apparently so concerned about their future at State as they try to reconfigure the department that they’ve taken to calling in sick or are working in different buildings to get out from under the watchful eye of the Rubio clan.

At DOD, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been left without his chief of staff and several top aides as they’ve reportedly been pushed out amid an investigation into leaks. One notable casualty is senior advisor Dan Caldwell, who has advocated for a more restraint-oriented foreign policy.

Caldwell released a statement about his and his two colleagues’ dismissals that read, in part, “We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door. All three of us served our country honorably in uniform – for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Two other individuals in line with Caldwell’s positioning on foreign policy have been the target of smears. Lt. Col. Daniel Davis was reportedly blocked from joining the Office of the Director of National Intelligence over his opposition to the war in Gaza and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby almost didn’t make it across the finish line.

The investigation that led to the dismissal of Hegseth’s top aides was allegedly unrelated to the Signal chat where national security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a discussion of strikes on the Houthis. Now, four people familiar tell The New York Times that Hegseth was involved in a different Signal chat where he shared information regarding Houthi attacks with his wife and brother. The Pentagon denies the report.

The White House is also denying an NPR report that claims they are looking for a replacement for Hegseth.

Regardless of whether the second Signal chat story is true, it does seem interesting that the seemingly more hawkish Waltz and Hegseth — who both argued against Vice President JD Vance’s assertion that the Houthi strikes were a “mistake” — have thus far survived the culling of Trump’s foreign policy arm.

Former Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who recently left the administration, wrote in an op-ed that the Pentagon is in “total chaos.”

“Unfortunately, after a terrible month, the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama,” Ullyot said. “The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon. Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department.”

I don’t claim to know exactly what is happening in the State Department or the Pentagon, but people I know who are committed to the president’s agenda are genuinely concerned about the direction things are going. It doesn’t seem totally outrageous to suggest that we could be looking at the same infighting and sabotage that undermined and, in some cases crippled, Trump’s agenda during his first term.

AUTHOR

Amber Duke

Senior Editor

RELATED VIDEO: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responds to fake news’ smear campaign

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