EMBARRASSING: Pentagon insiders are mocking Pete Hegseth with a brutal new nickname: “Dumb McNamara”
Pentagon staffers have reportedly taken to calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “Dumb McNamara” behind his back, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke to Zeteo.
The nickname draws a damning comparison to Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who dragged the United States deeper into Vietnam despite privately knowing the war was unwinnable.
Hegseth, who styled himself “Secretary of War” upon taking the job, has emerged as one of the loudest cheerleaders for Trump’s military campaign in Iran. Trump himself acknowledged it, telling a crowd in Tennessee, “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, ‘Let’s do it.'”
McNamara, by contrast, eventually commissioned the Pentagon Papers and turned against the war. Hegseth has shown no such reflection. “We negotiate with bombs,” he said this week while referencing U.S. aircraft loitering over Tehran.
The following day, Hegseth used the Pentagon’s first monthly worship service since the Iran war began to pray for what he called “overwhelming violence.”
The parallel to McNamara carries a warning that officials say Trump should take seriously. McNamara’s war obsession is widely seen as one of the defining factors that destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. Trump’s approval numbers are already in freefall.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted March 20-23 put his job approval at just 36 percent, down four points in a single week. Support for the Iran strikes specifically sits at 35 percent, with 61 percent of Americans now opposed.
“Everything has gone to s–t,” one official told Zeteo.