President Donald Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff claims that “there is nobody anywhere in Washington or across the defense industry who doesn’t believe Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has to go.”

“They all believe that he’s a menace, an incalculable danger, an existential threat,” Wolff reports. “Daily leaks about his blunders, stupidity, malfeasance, and weird conduct — his wife has moved into the Pentagon as his effective second-in-command — have become part of a growing rear-guard rebellion to get him out.”

Wolff said the president’s closest advisers also believe Hegseth should be dismissed. “Yesterday is their timetable,” he said. “Everyone is alarmed — truly, freaked out. He has no supporters left anywhere. Except for Donald Trump.”

Wolff’s account follows several revelations in which leakers approached the press with allegations of outlandish behavior, improper firings and a series of policy missteps. The allegations and assessments in this account are attributed to Wolff and the sources he cites; the article does not independently verify them.

According to Wolff, before Trump returned to the White House for a second term, everyone who had overseen the world’s largest military budget had possessed “extensive military, corporate, or political experience,” regardless of whether voters considered them successful. Their careers and résumés “logically placed them in the post.”

“Because the job is so do-or-die, no president, in the modern age, has chosen to appoint anyone who might be considered an outlier,” Wolff said. “But, of course, that was before Trump.”

Wolff described Hegseth’s résumé as “not just sparse” but lacking the relevant experience normally associated with running a complex organization, “not to mention the largest organization on earth.” He said it was “mostly marked by significant failures,” citing research and source information. Wolff added that Hegseth’s political career and subsequent work running veterans’ organizations, after serving in the National Guard, were characterized primarily by alcoholism and financial mismanagement.

“His personal life, also characterized by his alcoholism, includes multiple sexual abuse allegations, three marriages, and his fathering of a child with one woman when he was married to another,” Wolff said. He described Hegseth’s most substantial employment as co-host of a weekend television program on Fox News, where his boss, Roger Ailes, called him “Colonel Vodka” because he frequently discussed his National Guard service and then, according to Wolff, passed out in a drunken stupor.

Wolff said Hegseth holds his current position not because of expertise, experience or victories, “but precisely because he is lacking them.” During Trump’s first administration, Wolff said, the officials overseeing the military were clearly more intelligent than the president and could not conceal their contempt for what he called Trump’s stupidity.

“Almost every top-tier commander was struck by the determined ignorance of the commander-in-chief—and too frequently, they didn’t hide their feelings,” Wolff said. “Hence, Trump, in his second attempt at being president, hires ‘Colonel Vodka’ to run his Defense Department.”

Wolff said Hegseth then set out to purge the Pentagon of people who were smarter than Trump. “Hegseth understood that part of his job was to cleanse the Pentagon of layers of commanders who might believe that their expertise ought logically to provide a counterpoint to the president’s (and his Defense Secretary’s) lack of expertise,” he said.

Wolff said the Pentagon is now in trouble as munitions run low and a series of mistakes and bad decisions cause Trump’s entirely voluntary war on Iran to extend into the November midterm elections.

“There isn’t anyone who believes Pete Hegseth is up to that job,” Wolff said, adding that insiders are increasingly taking their views to the press.

Source: Alternet