Reporter Says Trump’s Entire Staff Rejected Idea Of Replacing Pete Hegseth With Ron DeSantis

According to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Donald Trump is stuck with Pete Hegseth as his nominee for Secretary of Defense because he couldn’t find a single person close to him that supported the idea of switching him out with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is a much easier pick and would likely sail to an easy confirmation, but Trump’s allies are still mad about the primaries and refuse to give DeSantis an inch. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

like many people in this country, I have been looking at the Pete Hegseth nomination to be the new Secretary of Defense, wondering to myself, why is Donald Trump standing by this guy? Why is he doubling and tripling down on this particular nomination when reports have already said, you've got a perfectly good guy down here in Florida? Not that he's a good guy by any stretch, Ron DeSantis that you could nominate for this position. Sail through an easy confirmation, boom, bang, done. Why are you sticking with Hegseth? Well, according to New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman, the woman who has been labeled the Trump whisperer for her ability to, you know, get Trump insiders and even Trump himself at times, to just open up about everything according to conversations that she has had with people in Trump's orbit. The reason that Donald Trump is sticking with Hegseth and not replacing him with Ron DeSantis as reports had suggested, is because there is not a single person, not one.

She says inside Trump's orbit, his allies, his donors, his cabinet picks, none of 'em were okay with the idea of putting Ron DeSantis in that position. Here's what Haberman said in a recent interview on CNN that aired this past, uh, uh, uh, Friday. Anderson Cooper asked, you reporting a while back that President-elect Trump had grown tired of hearing all the negative stories about him and was poised to move on, but what's changed his mind about Hegseth? And Haberman said, I think it's still true that he was tired and is tired of negative stories. And what changed was a couple of things. One was Trump could not find a single person in his door orbit, or even really outside of it, who liked this idea of making Ron DeSantis the governor of Florida, the Defense Secretary choice. And it was not, you know, we're going to drop Hegseth and we're going to look for a bunch of other people.

It was Hegseth or DeSantis at that point. And so Trump was persuaded after a call from Pete Hegseth to let Hegseth go out and see if he could fight his way past some of these stories. And he also, for the record, let's not forget, had his mommy call members of the Senate to tell him what a special little boy he was. So Trump was like, okay, if it's not gonna be Hegseth, what about DeSantis? And his whole orbit was like, hell no. We would rather go with this guy that's gotten more skeletons in his closet than a Spirit Halloween store than Ron DeSantis. I, I don't even know what to say about that. I mean, look, I despise Ron DeSantis. His policies are absolutely horrific as a human being. I think he fails on every single level. He is a disgusting, disturbing little man who wears high heeled shoes. But in terms of, is he a better nominee than Pete? He, yes, because as bad as Ron DeSantis

Is, he does not have those skeletons. Trust me, if Ron DeSantis had any kind of really horrible, scandalous thing, we, we would've talked about it over the years, right? It would've been uncovered. But as horrible as he is on policies, he's not, uh, uh, I don't wanna say not corrupt, but kind of like not a criminal, obviously. So not saying Hegseth is, but you know what I mean. Like there's, there's no real, like this is gonna destroy Ron DeSantis stories out there. Hegseth on the other hand, those stories do exist.