President Donald Trump's own team has alienated the military to such a degree that support for him within its ranks has "bottomed out," according to a veterans' advocate — making service members the latest in a series of key voting blocs to drift away from the president.

Over the past nearly two years, Trump has lost ground with Latino voters, the small percentage of Black voters he swayed in 2024, suburban women, young voters and some white male voters. Members of the military may now be joining them. While some have pointed to figures like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one veteran countered that Hegseth is only the executioner for the death of the republic — Trump is the one calling the shots.

MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle reported on a Washington Post story saying that Hegseth intends to remove 20 percent of the top U.S. military leadership — the generals and admirals who hold the Pentagon's most senior command positions — while the country is engaged in another war. The report describes planned changes rather than removals already carried out. Hegseth, meanwhile, is meeting this week only with attractive soldiers who meet his desired weight-to-height ratio (PBS NewsHour).

Responding to the report on Wednesday, veterans' rights activist Paul Rieckhoff — an Army veteran of the Iraq War who founded the veterans' advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America — said that even Democrats were able to impeach Hegseth and remove him before he fires everyone, the problem would not be solved, because it does not come from Hegseth alone.

"Welcome to the cold open for 'Saturday Night Live' this week, right?" Rieckhoff quipped about Hegseth's obsession with having fit and attractive men around him. "But it is our reality. And I've always said that Pete Hegseth is the acting secretary of 'Culture War.' His job has been to wage culture war on the Pentagon. And this is the latest extension of that."

The danger Rieckhoff sees is that cutting the top 20 percent of the U.S. military would mean "eliminating the most intelligent, the most experienced, the most powerful people who could push back on you. This is an expansion of the purge. This is a way to consolidate power. This is a way to remove dissent. This is a way to drive forward his agenda."

While stories about Hegseth's preference for fit, attractive personnel have fueled memes and jokes on late-night comedy shows, Rieckhoff said the bigger issue is that the effort is part of a plan to "bring a chainsaw through the Pentagon."

"If you can remove 20 percent of the generals, that is a huge number of people who push back on the Iran war, on attacking Cuba, on regulating AI. And it clears a path. And I always remind people: imagine where Pete Hegseth would be if he wasn't screwing up all the time. That's how far he is on plan, and he's not slowing down," he said.

Ruhle then asked whether military members are abandoning Trump as voters.

"Yes, it's changed with everybody. I mean, he's bottomed out with his base and the manosphere and people like Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan. He's bottomed out within the military, too, especially because they saw the USS Lincoln hanging out in the ocean for months and months," Rieckhoff explained. "And by the way, an underreported story, part of the story, the USS Roosevelt just left. Nothing has stopped the Iran war."

"Donald Trump is still doing anything he wants with the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and nothing is stopping him," he cautioned.

The full segment is available on YouTube and Facebook; additional clips via YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels.