The Keith Edwards Show - He's getting fired...

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Go to proton.me/keith to get started with Proton Mail. Sign up for a free account and take back control of your email.👍 SUPPORT THE SHOWSubscribe on Edwards WireBecome a MemberKeith Edwards reacts to alarming calls from top MAGA leaders for Pete Hegseth to resign, after continued fallout from the Iran war.📡 JOIN THE COMMUNITYListen on SpotifyFollow me on FacebookFollow me on InstagramFollow me on TikTokFollow me on XFollow me on Threads🎙️ TALK TO MEVoicemail line: ‪[phone]‬Business: [e-mail]

We have a big update on this resignation that happened out of nowhere where the army secretary in the middle of the Iran War put in his resignation. Now, if you don't know, here's some brief background on what this really means. He had had months of friction. We had been reporting that this could be a possibility for quite some time. In fact, we actually had stories months ago about this underlying friction that hadn't quite spilled over yet. At that time, the friction was coming from the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegg said,

towards Dan Driscoll, but in the last several months, it appears as though that friction has been two-sided. This was something that was expected. I was told by one source, there was no surprise here that he submitted his resignation, although I will tell you that I not talk to other members of the administration who said they were hoping that he would last a little bit longer, just as this continuation of this Iran war is playing out right now. We did get a statement just seconds ago from the White House, so I'm going to read it to you, says Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump's agenda to make America strong again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations,

restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and more. The United States Army is more powerful than ever, thanks to his work alongside the commander chief and secretary of war. Now, we have updates on this where one reporter says that the former Army Secretary reportedly met with Trump to inform him that the Iran war was making it impossible to achieve foreign policy goals. Trump talked exclusively about the ballroom in response. He's losing his mind. And that caused the Army Secretary to resign believing the administration was, quote, doomed. I finally read the fine print on my free email account, and it turns out it's making

somebody money, just not me. Every message I send gets scanned to a company I've never been. I've never met, can build a little profile of who I am. Cool. I just love that. Well, that's why I partnered with today's sponsor, ProtonMail, encrypted email that actually works for you, not the ad guys. ProtonMail is end-to-end encrypted and built under strict Swiss privacy laws to only you and whoever your emailing can read it, not even Proton. No ads, no trackers, nobody's scanning your inbox to sell you the thing you already bought last week. This way, you control your not the provider, and your inbox finally feels like it's actually yours again. And switching, it actually couldn't be easier with easy switch.

You connect your old account, import your contacts and emails, and even reply from your Gmail address while you make the move. You leave the old one behind whenever you're ready. No blowing up your entire digital life on a random Wednesday. Your email should belong to you. So get your free Proton mail account at Proton.me. slash Keith, free, encrypted, and nobody reading over your shoulder. Now, what's really interesting is that he gave that resignation to Trump. But really, he should have given in that to Heggseth.

Here's the bulwark Sam Stein diving into more about why that's so strange. Dan Driscoll, Army Secretary, resigns. It looks like the reasons he retired was essentially Hegsef just messing around way too much in the rank and file. And finally, Driscoll says enough, and he goes to Trump. The Atlantic in the story recounts that he goes to Trump with his resignation letter and talked to him about the things that he thinks are going poorly at DoD. Obviously, it's a bit frightening to see all the civilian leaders gone and Senate confirmed position is gone and just utter chaos at the Pentagon, which I can't either recall seeing before. We've never seen this degree of chaos and disarray. And it's dangerous, but since the Pentagon,

kind of an important place, you know. He decided to leave now and he decided to basically tell the Atlantic. So he wasn't being shy about signaling his to. this pleasure with the way Haxeth is treating the military, which is really both outrageous and sort of scary in terms of firing all the generals. Jisco also let it be known that he had got to Trump. Yeah, that stood out to me. There's two layers of it. One is that he could have submitted a letter explaining why he was resigning to Trump,

but he chose to go there and talk about it in person. So that's one element. But then the meta element that you allude to, which is leaking or at least having people leak. Or maybe he didn't even leak, but people who knew about it felt the need to say, hey, Trump knows about this. He went right to Trump. Donald Trump can't feign ignorance about the fact that people in the Pentagon think Pete Hegseth is running the place into the ground. Now, I think Pete Hegseth is not long for this administration because even when asked about whether or not Hegssef should run for

president, there are rumors, strangely, that he's considering that. I'd like to see it. It would be very entertaining. He won't win. Here's Donald Trump's response to that rumored reporting. Well, I think he's doing a fantastic job, but it's very early to talk about that. We have to get through the midterms first. And I think he's a very good guy, but I'll bet there's a lot of people considering it that you don't know about. You probably have a lot of people, but he's done a great job. And right now, all he loves and all he cares about is the military and taking care of the military. So I think, I mean, as one person wrote here, expect more resignations to come shortly,

and that Hegg Seth is being offered up as a scapego. I think that is 100% true. Donald Trump's going to need someone to blame. Do you think he's going to blame himself? No. Do you think he's going to blame Marco Rubio? J.D. Venn? No. Pete Heggseth was always brought in to be the one to take the fall when things go wrong.

More people are saying, too, that keep in mind that Drand Driscoe was a rabid Trump supporter. So for him to reach the conclusion that Trump has putting in his head was not an easy thing. Someone else said there's a lot of conspiracies. surrounding the ballroom, but an underrated take is that Trump is really just losing his mind. Nobody's willing to tell him no. And he's actually really bad at real estate construction. Hence why it's all effed up. Marjorie Tether Green said, perfect example of almost every conversation she's had with Trump.

Try to tell him something important. He doesn't care. He changes a subject to some vanity topic he breaks about. Dan Driscoll did the right thing. How many of us have to resign before America gets it? And really, I mean, this is truly, my opinion, it's a sign of two things. One, the Iran war is failing. Two, Donald Trump clearly has dementia.

Now, we also have reporting, too, that Tom Tillis, who was the tiebreaker to confirm Hegsseth, now finally found his soul out of nowhere and saying that Trump should fire Pete Hegsseth for inept management. And military leaders have reportedly been warning Defense Secretary Pete Hegset that a prolonged war with Iran is unsustainable and pushing back against his purge of top officials. And now some Republican senators are voicing serious concerns about his leadership. Tom Tillis, who cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Haguesteth, now says Trump should fire him for his, quote, inept management. Mark Kelly actually agreed with the Republican saying my Senate colleague, Tom Tillis, is right. Pete Hackseth has long past his expiration date as Secretary of Vince he needs to go.

I feel like this is, it feels like it's going to happen. The only thing is that Pete Hacksets is a man. And it feels like I think Donald Trump's only fired women at this point. Still, one Republican member of Congress said that he agreed with Tom Tillis and that Pete Heggseth has to go. I agree with the sentiments of Senator 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 has not been a very good leader in many ways. So I agree with the sentiments to Senator Tillis, and I wouldn't hire myself. He would not be on my team. You, of course, served. You reached the rank of Brigadier General. You did four tours in the Middle East. So when you see the Secretary of Defense disparaging a Canadian cadet, a teenager, we should note, taking part in a summer training camp and her instructor on social media, posting a photo of two women. You see them there at a moment of what's clearly great pride for them. Is that beneath the digity of the office, as Canada's defense minister said? It is. It's lowbrow. I think it's unprofessional. And I'd like to think that our leadership representing us in the Pentagon and in the White House, we should be better than that. And I thought it was demeaning and uncalled for. As you know, there were questions about Hegsteth during confirmation hearings, quite hard questions. And yet, Republican senators confirmed him. Should they

have seen this coming? I think so. I told a few senators that I would vote no. And I would I was told by some and I'll keep them nameless, Don, you're not under all the pressure that we're under to vote for. But I said, I've been under a lot of other pressure and other bills. I still vote no or vote my conscience. I felt like he was trouble from the beginning. And then right after he got, you know, confirmed, then we had, you know, the signal gate. And what bothered me there, he put classified information on an unclassified phone and an unclassified application gets caught. and instead of just saying, you know, I was wrong, I shouldn't have done it.

He gets mad at the reporter. And I expect leaders to take responsibility when they fail and they make a mistake. None of us are perfect. But when you fail, you own up to it and say, I was wrong and it won't happen again. And I heard somebody that acted more like my teenagers, they're 30 and 40 now, but when they were teenagers, just deny and accuse somebody else of being at fault. I didn't like it. I thought it was wrong.

And service members have literally died because of Pete Hegss incompetence. Pat Ryan revealed that yesterday during a committee meeting. Internal analysis had said the site was indefensible from aerial attack and should not be used. Yet you sent our soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command there anyway. Is that true or false? True or false? Straightforward question. Are you going to give me a chance to answer or just like gotcha?

Did you send them there or not? I always, we took proactive measures from the beginning to ensure force protection and defensive posture would maximize across the theater. Let's talk about what defenses they had. Prior to the attack, officers on the ground knew our troops were vulnerable. In fact, they requested additional force protection. Did they receive it? Wherever humanly possible, force protection and counter UAS was always made available. They did not.

In fact, when asked to describe the base, they did not. In fact, when asked to describe the base's defense, one survivor who's come forward from the unit said, quote, I mean, I would put it in the none category from a drone defense capability, none. And Frank Kendall, who was the Air Force Secretary in the Biden administration, literally said that it's going to take years, if not decades, to repair two years of Pete Hex-F. I spent 20 years in the Pentagon. It has always been that way until this administration. Do you worry about the impact it has long-term? Oh, absolutely. Caitlin, four years of this is going to do enormous damage. It's going to take several years or a decade to go repair this and restore the type of system

that we have had traditionally. When we listen to Secretary Huxeth, I mean, he often has the same kind of mantra that he repeats. Some people might hear that and agree with it. Some people might say, well, I like that he's doing that. The concerns, though, that we seem to be hearing in our reporting and from Secretary Triscoll himself is that it's impacting what he believes the military should be focused on what he believes the secretary Huxeth should be focused on right now in our competition strategically brain power is just as important as how big somebody's biceps are we need people with intellectual

capital just as much we need people are physically capable he's over emphasizing this kind of you know bro thing with the testosterone thing you mentioned as well as many other things that's not what the Secretary of Defense should be worrying about. What he should be worrying about is not getting us into a conflict that we have no obvious way out of and isn't going to accomplish the things we got into. And we're thinking an absolute disaster in Iran right now. We went into this thing with very poor assumptions about how it will play out.

Risks that were well understood and prevented any other prior Secretary of Defense or President from doing this were ignored. And we went into this conflict. We now have no way out. We need leadership that doesn't do that sort of. a thing. And the other things that are kind of window dressing that Secretary HECS seems to be focused on are not things that a secretary of defense should be worrying about. The professional military will take care of standards of grooming, physical fitness, and all those things. They're

very good at that, and they always have been. He doesn't need to worry about that. But frankly, in this case, I don't think he knows how to do anything else. So he's doing the things that he understands and thinks he can do something about. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, just like with COVID, Donald Trump can pretend like everything's fine, but eventually reality catches up with you. And I think reality is catching up to him very quickly. Now, the way that Donald Trump is going to get out of this is by blaming everything on Pete Hexeth, firing him, putting someone in even worse. But my hope is, is that after he fires him, he uses that as an excuse to say that this was incompetently managed by Pete Hexed.

and that Donald Trump's going to fix it by ending the war. That's what I hope. I hope that's what comes out of this. Is one, drunkard Pete Hagseth resigns or is fired and two, it stops the war. I truly don't know how else we'll get out of this thing without some sort of scapego. And my hope is that Pete Hagseth is that it does look like the rumblings are getting louder. And I don't think Donald Trump is going to be able to ignore them. I certainly don't think Pete Haxseth is going to.

to be able to avoid the inevitable, which is Donald Trump doing what he always does, using the closest person next to him as a scapegoat to deflect from the fact that Donald Trump hasn't no, doesn't know what the hell is going on. All right. Well, if you like the video, hit like, subscribe and I'll see you soon.