Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News weekend host with a reported drinking problem, has dismissed, forced into retirement, or blocked the promotions of more than 80 senior U.S. military generals and admirals since taking office in January 2025. Hegseth, who frequently promotes “lethality over legality,” disparaging human rights and the Geneva Conventions, has also dismissed or replaced three of the military’s top judge advocates general or (JAG) officers, who advise military commanders on whether specific actions comply with domestic and international law. Last October, the defense secretary imposed new media policies that effectively booted out most news media from the Pentagon.
Hegseth has specifically targeted black, Latino and women senior officers for termination or cancelled promotions under the guise of his anti-diversity campaign as he promotes testosterone testing and administered polygraph tests to 50 high-ranking officers and staff investigating alleged leaks. Following months of friction and policy clashes with Hegseth, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation in late August.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with retired U.S. Army Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the U.S. military, was chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, and is now a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. Here Col. Wilkerson discusses growing concern about Hegseth’s unprecedented purge of top Pentagon leaders and his politicization of the armed forces as Donald Trump threatens to order the nation’s military to intervene in this November’s midterm election.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Pete Hegseth is a clear and present danger to the United States of America and he is a tremendous deficit in terms of leadership and control and competency in the very department that he heads. The other things he’s doing with regard to the Army that are unconscionable is he’s got 1 out of 10, now “mental category fours” (loss of top military leadership and is relying on the less qualified.) If you know anything about the Vietnam War and McNamara’s 100,000, you know how disastrous that is because these are people that get you killed on the battlefield because they’re incompetent. They can’t read their name on a guard roster.
SCOTT HARRIS: Hmmm.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: He’s packing the army with them. He’s also packing the army with Christian nationalists because he is a fervid Christian nationalist himself and has had ceremonies in the central courtyard of the Pentagon, for example, that were in essence Christian prayer meetings. Now we’re supposed to have separation of church and state in this country, but Hegseth does not believe in that and has said that he doesn’t believe in that, has formally said that to the troops. He leads prayer meetings in the Pentagon himself personally, and the audience is told where to sit and how to sit and how to come and how to go and listens even to some of Hegseth’s favorite preachers who say things like, “Women are only good for having babies and that’s all women are good for and that’s all they should do.” Or says such things as, “If you’re not involved in this war, then you’re not for Jesus because you’re not fighting for the Constitution or for the security of America, you’re fighting for Jesus.” This is Pete Hegseth.
And we must remember, too, that J.D. Vance, the vice president, for the first time since 1947 in the history of the position and people filling that position, Hegseth, his vote for confirmation had to be determined by the vice president coming and voting because it was a tie vote. It should not have been a tie vote. They should have voted him down. They should have never put him forward for nomination from the committee, but they did. And now we’re stuck with him. Next to Trump, he’s probably the most dangerous man in the administration.
SCOTT HARRIS: Col. Wilkerson, one thing that I’ve been asking a lot of folks who are guests on this show: If orders are given to the U.S. military to carry out repression of protest in the streets that would ensue if the election is stolen by Trump and company, would the military carry out those orders that would be blatantly illegal and non-constitutional?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: In fact, I’m fairly sure we aren’t going to get to that juncture. I think there are sufficient forces now who will be more or less completely compliant with any orders they are given within the ICE complex, what I call the brown shirts, echoing Hitler in the ’30s. I think they will be the forces deployed and they will be the forces used. But to your question specifically, there are some elements I think in battleground states of the militia, that is the National Guard, and of the active forces themselves that Hegseth has finally finely tuned and I think knows how to move and distribute them, that if it were necessary, they could be used. The question in my mind on both events, let’s say it’s pure ICE doing it and it’s in battleground states that they want to make sure go their way. And the military is standing on the sideline, maybe some of them waiting to see if they have to help, might there not then be a civil war within the military? Active duty units against ICE and maybe against some of their own militia forces or even some of their own forces?
That’s a recipe for real disaster. So I mean, you’ve got all kinds of possibilities when you prep the ground the way Hegseth has and the way I think two other people who are very much in this and are probably two of the most powerful people in this administration. And most Americans don’t know this, one is the deputy chief of staff for policy, far more powerful than that title recommends. He’s more like a national security adviser, far more like a national security adviser, an alter ego to the president, if you will, than Marco Rubio or even JD Vance. And this is Stephen Miller. He’s more powerful than Susie Wiles. He’s more powerful than Pete Hegseth, more powerful than Marco Rubio and more powerful ultimately than JD Vance. And then the other person is (Russell) Vought at the Office of Management and Budget. He’s the Project 25 architect.
He’s the one who says he doesn’t believe in the Constitution. He’s the one who says he thinks America ought to be a corporatocracy. And oh, by the way, he’ll name the people to be in that corporate leadership. So these two people are extremely dangerous and they’re all for a coup.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Lawrence B. Wilkerson (29:10) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack or social media, subscribe here.
