Hegseth earning rebukes in public for his Defense Dept actions….

Pete Hegseth IS remaking the US Defense Dept. in HIS image…..

People ARE getting worried about that…..

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) in a Wednesday interview backed up his colleague in the Senate, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), in pushing for the ouster of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I agree with the sentiments of Sen. Tillis. I hate to tell the president who he should hire and fire. I don’t know if it’s really my role, but I would say this: I would not — he would not be on my team. I think he is — he has not been a very good leader in many ways,” Bacon said of Hegseth on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

“So, I agree with the sentiments of Sen. Tillis, and I wouldn’t hire him myself. He would not be on my team,” he added.

Tillis called on President Trump to fire Hegseth over what the North Carolina Republican said was the Defense secretary’s “inept management” of the military.

Tillis ratcheted up his criticism of Hegseth’s leadership in the wake of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announcing his resignation. Driscoll had butted heads with Hegseth on multiple occasions about the ouster of senior officials.

“I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country. He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force,” Tillis posted on the social platform X.

Key GOP lawmakers have expressed concern about the turnover of senior staff at the Pentagon as well as the lack of a clear plan from the administration to end the war in Iran and the failure of the Trump administration to connect with Democrats to create support for funding priorities…..

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Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta blasted current Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Thursday for “undermining the strength” of the U.S. military.

“I think the secretary is undermining the strength of our military — and particularly the Army — by creating the kind of turmoil in the command structure that he’s been creating,” Panetta told host Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”….

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Panetta, who led the Pentagon and CIA during the Obama administration, said Hegseth is dismissing “command structures” that bring “experience and leadership to the position.”

Those moves, the former Defense secretary argued, leave the U.S. vulnerable — particularly amid the ongoing war with Iran, which has depleted the Pentagon’s stockpiles of long-range interceptors.

“It isn’t the Secretary that is leading those people on the battlefield, it is those commanders,” Panetta told Blitzer. “And when you get rid of those commanders, and when you get rid of the secretary of the Army, what you do is you create turmoil, which damages the ability of the Army to do its job, particularly at a time of war.”

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