If I were Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, I might start packing up my office at the Pentagon.
While President Trump is boasting about the so-called success of a war with Iran that has no clear mission nor end in sight, Americans are souring on it. Big time.
New polling from CBS News/YouGov shows an increasingly bearish public when it comes to the war, with 57% saying it’s going somewhat or very badly. Sixty-three percent believe the war will make the U.S. economy weaker in the short term, while a whopping 92% say the most important thing the U.S. should do with regard to Iran right now is “end the conflict as quickly as possible.”
Hardly a rousing endorsement. We know Trump closely monitors the polls, which is perhaps why he said what he did on Monday while at a roundtable in Memphis.
While discussing crime, Trump oddly detoured to brag about his decision to go to war with Iran and then pointed to Hegseth, who was in the room, and said: “And Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, ‘Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’ ”
Now, any other time and any other president and you’d call this a compliment. But seasoned Trump-watchers’ eyebrows raised at the subtle but discernible sign of what may be to come.
It would be, after all, a very Trumpian and convenient blame-shift to make the war all Pete’s idea when it’s slumping in the polls, and it doesn’t help Hegseth that reports are swirling around D.C. that Republicans on the Hill and inside the administration have “zero confidence” in him.
As former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem knows all too well, Trump only loves you until he doesn’t. When ICE raids in Minneapolis turned deadly and the sordid headlines around her spending and personal life got too unbearable, Trump dumped the glammed-up grifter with an unceremonious thanks and a move to a made-up new post.
Former Kennedy Center head Ric Grenell had also been one of Trump’s longtime favorites, but he too lost his job this month after overseeing plummeting ticket sales, a mass exodus of artists, and scathing headlines. And that’s after he put Trump’s name on the building!
A couple other Trump cabinet members may want to prepare for early exits, while we’re at it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s DOJ has been rightfully dragged through the mud for its incompetence and political hackery, overseeing multiple failed attempts at indicting Trump’s political opponents, an obvious cover-up of the Epstein files, and losing so much talent it now has to recruit prosecutors straight out of law school. Maybe that’s why Bondi recently hung the North Korea-coded banner of Trump on DOJ HQ.
DNI Tulsi Gabbard might not be long for this world either. She’s been excluded from high-level meetings at the White House, so much so that the joke among aides is that DNI stands for “Do Not Invite.” Even Trump has publicly dismissed her advice.
If you’re wondering why these folks continue to work for a guy who humiliates them, sidelines them, and then dumps them, that’s easy — they have no principles, integrity or self-respect! And when you’re solely motivated by naked power grabs and money, you can put up with a lot.
Only time will tell if Hegseth, Bondi and Gabbard can survive what will only become worse and worse headlines. But in the meantime, Pete might want to put a Trump banner up on the Pentagon — just in case.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.