Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suddenly fired a top aide after he upset one of President Donald Trump’s civilian appointees to the military.
Navy chief of staff Jon Harrison was working with Navy Secretary John Phelan to upend the service’s bureaucracy, including stripping the office of the undersecretary—the Navy’s second-highest civilian leader—of much of its power, Politico reported.
But Trump’s nominee for undersecretary, a retired Navy captain and MAGA insider named Hung Cao, “was keeping track of all this while waiting for his confirmation vote,” a defense official told Politico.
Soon after he was confirmed on Oct. 1, he complained to Hegseth’s team. Two days after Cao’s confirmation, on Oct. 3, Hegseth fired Harrison without even telling Phelan until after the fact, according to Politico. The Navy secretary is a presidential appointee.
Sources told Politico that the abrupt firing was part of a broader culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation at the Pentagon, where top officials have been fired without explanation after providing military assessments that Trump didn’t like.
“It’s better just to keep your head down and not necessarily try to do anything to the advantage of the organization, because it’s very much run from the top down,” a senior defense official said.
The defense secretary has been desperate to control the narrative at the Pentagon, where he has restricted press freedom, implemented a policy of random polygraph tests to weed out press leaks, and punished employees who don’t toe the party line on key MAGA causes.
Harrison and Cao didn’t respond to Politico’s request for a comment. A Pentagon spokesperson told the outlet, “We all serve at the pleasure of the president.”
A White House spokesperson told Politico that Trump has “full confidence” in Hegseth and his ability to make sure that everyone at the Department of Defense is “aligned with the president’s mission to Make America Strong Again.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
Cao, 54, spent 30 years in the Navy before deciding to run for Congress in 2022 and 2024, losing both times.
Trump endorsed his 2024 Senate campaign against Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine of Virginia, who won by 9 points.
During a debate with Kaine, Cao blamed low military recruitment on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including apparently a second-class petty officer and drag queen performer who was selected as a digital ambassador for the Navy.
“When you’re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy that’s not the people we want,” Cao said. “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them, and ask for seconds. Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.”
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