Pete Hegseth’s time at the Department of War is timed according to new reports. The Daily Beast’s Washington bureau chief is placing his bets on the Secretary of War to be the first one that Trump will let go.
David Gardner claims that the President is waiting for Hegseth’s one-year appointment anniversary. “We were told early on that Trump did not want a repeat of his first administration, where it was kind of chaos,” the Daily Beast’s Washington bureau chief said on the publication’s Podcast.
He was referring to the frenzy that Trump went on as he hired and fired his staff throughout the first term. Gardner noted how the constant change brought about “a lot of unrest within the administration.”
He notes how they were “told” that the 79-year-old had decided to give his Cabinet a year to see their performance. This allegedly applied to Trump’s leading Cabinet members. The rule was put in place to reportedly avoid constant departures.
Gardner’s guess was that, coming January, there was a high chance Pete Hegseth would be cut loose from the Trump administration. “Watch out for January and Pete Hegseth, because I don’t think he’s going to last much longer than that first year,” he shared.
🇺🇸 US President Donald Trump plans to attend an unprecedented unscheduled meeting of all senior officers of the US Armed Forces at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia.
The meeting was scheduled by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth last week. Nearly 900 generals and admirals… pic.twitter.com/cOoMwgqtZE
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) September 28, 2025
The Daily Beast’s Washington bureau chief also claimed that Hegseth was at the bottom of the list when it came to efficiency but “top of the list in terms of suck ups.” The Secretary of War has been taking a “back step in the whole procedure.”
Gardner shared how he thinks the President doesn’t trust Hegseth. He pointed out how the United States Secretary of War was made to take a different plane to travel to the meeting in the Middle East, while the rest of the staff boarded a different aircraft. The Daily Beast’s Washington bureau chief sees the act as Trump “sending a message.”
Sarah Ewall-Wice, a reporter with the Daily Beast, explored Trump’s new strategy on a deeper level. “If you say your cabinet members are not going to be long-term choices from the get-go, then you put them in this competition,” she claimed.
She noted how the strategy practice forces members to “fight it out” since the beginning by forcing them to prove how loyal they are to the President. “So it’s really a fight for the president’s attention and support more than it is a fight for the job and the department,” she alleged.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick might be some other staff at risk of facing termination, according to a poll conducted by WIRED magazine.
