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{"id":26993,"date":"2026-09-02T17:47:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/tillis-renews-calls-for-hegseths-ouster\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T17:47:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:47:38","slug":"tillis-renews-calls-for-hegseths-ouster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/tillis-renews-calls-for-hegseths-ouster\/","title":{"rendered":"Tillis renews calls for Hegseth&#8217;s ouster"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Sen. Thom Tillis renewed his call for President Donald Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday, following the resignation earlier this week of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SenThomTillis\/status\/2095175195648512020\" target=\"_blank\">the outgoing two-term North Carolina Republican wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Driscoll, whose long-rumored resignation became official this week, had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/08\/31\/army-secretary-resigns-01058326\" target=\"_blank\">clashed with Hegseth over the Defense secretary\u2019s<\/a> reluctance to modernize the Army and his firings of dozens of senior officers. Hegseth has focused more on cultural issues \u2014 including grooming and fitness standards \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/09\/01\/hegseth-driscoll-tech-culture-wars-01060795\" target=\"_blank\">within the department<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we had a @SecWar who maintained the same priorities and forward-thinking, he would be fighting to retain talented leaders like Dan and the many flag officers he has forced into retirement,\u201d Tillis charged. \u201cInstead, he is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The White House and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment on Tillis\u2019 post.<\/p>\n<p>Tillis, who is not running for reelection in November, has openly clashed with Hegseth since Trump tapped the former Fox News host to lead the Pentagon in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>In May, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2026\/05\/22\/thom-tillis-trump-republicans-interview-00928214?nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&amp;nname=playbook&amp;nrid=e5258108-c464-426a-b285-f2029af35557&amp;utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us\" target=\"_blank\">Tillis told POLITICO<\/a> he believed Hegseth had misinformed Trump on the dynamics of a war in Iran. Firing Hegseth, he said, was on \u201ca Christmas wish list.\u201d In a book set to be released next month, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/08\/06\/congress\/thom-tillis-new-book-01027141\" target=\"_blank\">Tillis branded Hegseth<\/a> \u2014 along with a handful of other White House officials \u2014 as \u201cMAGATS\u201d and accused them of \u201cnot looking around corners and taking care of this president.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It hasn\u2019t earned him friends in the administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe media said how brave he was to take me on, but he wasn\u2019t brave, he was just the opposite &#8211; HE WAS A QUITTER!\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/116618410517308849\" target=\"_blank\">Trump wrote on Truth Social in May<\/a>. &#8220;Now he can have all the fun he wants for a few months, with some of his RINO friends, screwing the Republican Party. In the end it will only get bigger, and better, and stronger, than ever before!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sen. Thom Tillis renewed his call for President Donald Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday, following the resignation earlier this week of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. \u201cI have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,\u201d the outgoing two-term North Carolina Republican wrote on X. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}