The Republican Party’s midterm disaster has triggered a full-blown blame game inside Donald Trump’s White House. And with several powerful officials now looking over their shoulders, the fight to avoid becoming the administration’s next casualty appears to be getting ugly.
While Trump publicly insists he has no plans for major Cabinet shake-ups, reports from inside his administration paint a very different picture: officials are maneuvering to protect themselves, rivals are being pushed toward the firing line, and everyone seems to be looking for someone else to blame.
The losses were enormous. Democrats stormed back into control of both the House and Senate, delivering a stunning rejection of Trump’s presidency. Yet rather than confront the political damage, Trump has congratulated Democrats, blamed Republican candidates and appeared eager to move on. Behind closed doors, however, the question is reportedly becoming much more personal: Who is going to pay for this?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is emerging as one of the leading candidates to take the fall. The eight-month Iran war has become a major political liability for the administration, and exit polls indicate that it was among the concerns weighing on voters. According to The Daily Mail, Trump has been calling advisers to ask whether Hegseth should be fired. One senior Republican reportedly said the president was actively considering it, with some insiders expecting Hegseth could be gone before the new Congress takes office in January.
The Pentagon is hardly a picture of calm. A source familiar with the situation described the atmosphere to The Washington Post as “very dynamic,” adding that the “knives” were out. Hegseth could survive, however, with Trump potentially turning his attention to Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine, who has overseen the Iran war. The White House maintains that Hegseth has Trump’s full support, and the defense secretary says he wants to remain in his position through the end of the president’s term.
But Hegseth isn’t the only one trying to avoid taking the blame. Vice President JD Vance has already made his position on the Iran war unmistakably clear. In a lengthy post on X Wednesday, he declared: “The reason we lost is the war.” He also pointed out that Trump himself had acknowledged the conflict was a factor in the election results.
That message reportedly caught the president off guard. A White House official told The Daily Mail that Trump was “blindsided” by Vance’s post. Other insiders interpreted it as a calculated attempt to distance the vice president from the war and shift responsibility toward the administration’s more hawkish figures, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Vance has a potential defense: He reportedly opposed an all-out assault on Iran before the war began. But that hasn’t stopped some Trump officials from accusing him of trying to rewrite his own role in the disaster. One senior official dismissed his public criticism as “too little, too late,” arguing that Vance had failed to directly call the war a mistake.
And then there’s White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who reportedly has her own survival strategy. According to sources cited by The Daily Mail, Wiles is maneuvering to redirect blame toward Hegseth and put Rubio in the firing line while keeping Vance occupied fighting political battles of his own. One source described the strategy as a way to protect both Wiles’ position and Trump’s legacy.
The potential collision between Vance and Rubio could become particularly explosive. Vance is aligned with the Republican Party’s America First wing and can argue that he opposed the Iran war from the beginning. Rubio, meanwhile, could point to Vance’s involvement in diplomatic negotiations that ultimately failed. In other words, each man has a reason to argue that the other bears more responsibility.
Of course, the Iran conflict wasn’t the only reason Republicans lost. Voters were also concerned about the cost of living, government corruption, immigration enforcement and artificial intelligence. But the war has become a convenient target in Washington’s internal blame game, and Hegseth, Rubio and Vance are all caught up in the fallout.
