Fissures within the Trump administration have started to form as rivalries over trade and even Defense Department operations bring the infighting of the president’s first term roaring back to life.
The White House was praised in the first few months of President Donald Trump’s second term for chief of staff Susie Wiles’s discipline over infighting, leaking, and chaos that plagued the first administration. But now, advisers have begun to turn on each other privately and publicly as the fallout from Trump’s decision to slap most U.S. trade partners with higher tariffs, then pause those tariffs, and battle China in a trade war has thrown the financial markets into a tailspin.
Elon Musk, who is taking a step back from the administration, sparred with top Trump trade advisers over his disapproval of the “Liberation Day” tariffs. Meanwhile, Pentagon officials who worked under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have taken to the media to air out dirty laundry and call for his ouster, in a remarkable display of disloyalty that Trump usually abhors.
Several Pentagon staffers have lost their jobs after the Atlantic’s top editor was given access to a Signal group chat detailing plans of a U.S. airstrike on Yemen, along with the revelation from the New York Times that Hegseth shared the sensitive Yemen plans in a second Signal group chat with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
All of the infighting is now threatening Trump’s 100-day legacy of dominance.
“It was inevitable that the tight, disciplined operation that was the campaign would become less tight, less disciplined as the administration formed and the circle enlarged to include hundreds, if not thousands, of appointees and staff, many of whom are political actors in their own right,” Republican strategist Dennis Lennox said.
A chaotic Pentagon pushes forward
As Hegseth remains determined to hang on to his job, his former employees are not holding back their criticism of the department under his leadership.
Most notably, John Ullyot, a former chief Pentagon spokesman, wrote for Politico that there is “total chaos at the Pentagon” and urged Trump to fire Hegseth.
Ullyot pushed back against claims that several officials at the Pentagon who have been forced out or placed on leave were leaking sensitive information to the media. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s former chief of staff, also left the Pentagon in the aftermath of Signalgate.
“Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door,” he wrote after mentioning Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser, Darin Selnick, former deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, former chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg.
In a joint statement, Caldwell, Carroll, and Selnick said they were “incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended.”
“Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door,” they continued in a rebuttal of their former employer.
Joint statement from Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll, and Darin Selnick:
We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door. All…
— Dan Caldwell
(@dandcaldwell) April 19, 2025
The comments are unique for a department that prioritizes decorum and eschews partisanship, yet they paint a picture of a Pentagon in turmoil.
“It’s total dysfunction and amateur hour,” Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, said about the Pentagon in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Angie Wong, a Miami GOP committeewoman, claimed that “a lot of the fall guys” were Hegseth’s own staff members, which has bolstered Democratic calls for Hegseth to resign.
Simultaneously, backstabbing was interfering with Trump’s desire “to have a nice, clean, 100 days, where he pushes through his agenda,” Wong said.
White House stands behind Hegseth
The Trump White House has defended Hegseth despite growing calls for his resignation.
Hegseth attempted to downplay the severity of his actions during an interview at his former workplace this week.
“What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination [and] other things,” Hegseth told Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday morning. “That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”
After NPR reported that the administration was shopping around for a new defense secretary, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, quickly denounced the report.
The story is “total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about,” Leavitt wrote Monday on X. “As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind” Hegseth.
That same day, Leavitt also told reporters, “The president absolutely has confidence in Secretary Hegseth.”
The support has led some GOP experts to say that Hegseth will not lose his job.
“I do not expect Pete Hegseth to be let go as Secretary of Defense over this (and) certainly not in the short to medium term,” said Gregg Keller, a Republican consultant based in Missouri, who has talked with some Trump insiders. “Pete Hegseth may get thrown over at some point, but it won’t be in the aftermath of this.”
“First of all, that is Trump’s psychology is never accept blame or defeat, and by throwing over Hegseth, he would be doing exactly that,” Keller continued. “He would be giving a scalp to the Left, to the Democrats, to the media. And I would be shocked to see him do that.”
Dallek also referenced Trump’s affinity for “loyalists” compared to the establishment Republicans of his first term.
But questions about how long Hegseth will last, how Trump will deescalate trade wars, and how long the president can continue to use the executive branch to steamroll Congress have dominated the narrative about the White House.
“I think most Republican senators knew that Hegseth wasn’t qualified,” Dallek said, referencing reports that the defense secretary had struggled with alcoholism before his promotion. “He and some of the other appointments, I think, were clearly not ready for prime time. And so they might be more loyal to Trump, but they don’t necessarily have the kind of professionalism or gravitas or experience and achievement that would lend a sort of a smooth-running, button-down operation.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) appeared to call for Hegseth’s ouster in an interview with Politico this week.
“I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge,” Bacon said.
Disagreement on display
Trump’s fascination with using tariffs as a means to negotiate with the nation’s trade partners has not largely panned out, despite the president’s veneer of confidence.
“We have a lot of action going on,” Trump told reporters Wednesday morning when asked about the tariffs. “We are making a lot of money in this country. This country is not going to be losing money on trade anymore. We are losing $2 trillion a year on trade. Now we’re going to be making money, a lot of money. So that’s very good.”
But Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool has not been without strife, as some of his top officials have sparred publicly as the situation progressed and financial tumult grew.
Peter Navarro, the president’s chief trade adviser, was subject to DOGE adviser Elon Musk’s ire after repeatedly downplaying any negotiations with trade partners as the Liberation Day tariffs spooked the global markets, even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said trade deals were ongoing.
Musk notably slammed Navarro calling him “a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” on social media.
Leavitt, however, said the spat was not a sign of disunity within the White House.
“These are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs,” she said during a press briefing. “Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue.”
Musk and Bessent have also reportedly had problems, with Axios reporting that the two got into a shouting match last week in the White House over the IRS. Disagreement between the two men had previously been reported over the installation of Gary Shapley as the interim head of the IRS rankled Bessent, who reportedly felt Musk had interfered to get him placed.
Bessent, who oversees the agency, complained to Trump about the appointment, according to the New York Times, with the president shortly thereafter replacing Shapley with Michael Faulkender, Bessent’s deputy.
When asked about the disagreement between Bessent and Musk, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the outlet, “It’s no secret President Trump has put together a team of people who are incredibly passionate about the issues impacting our country.”
Meanwhile, Trump has tamped down his bitter recriminations against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, which had begun to rock the stock market.
“I have no intention of firing him,” Trump said Tuesday, backtracking on previous comments. “I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates. It’s the perfect time to lower interest rates.”
Trump’s tariff woes are not the only problems he has on the financial front. His efforts to trim the budget have spooked Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have even gone so far as to pause town halls with constituents.
“It’s not at all surprising that we’re starting to see cracks and even before Liberation Day,” Dallek added. “If we look at what Elon Musk has done with DOGE, that’s not a well-run, highly functional machine.”
Musk, the tech billionaire and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, announced Tuesday that he will spend “significantly” less time on DOGE beginning in May following the financial decline in Tesla earnings.
HEGSETH PRAISES DEFENSE DEPARTMENT’S FIRST 100 DAYS AS TENSIONS AT PENTAGON CONTINUE
Before that, Trump told Cabinet members that Musk would step back amid tensions that Musk’s DOGE, which has trimmed the federal workforce and shuttered agencies, was causing concerns for the administration and Republican lawmakers across the nation.
“He had his honeymoon period, and it kind of went away really quickly,” Wong said of Trump’s leadership. “The more and more Republicans I’m talking to these days, they’re having buyer’s remorse.”