Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, is now publicly calling on President Trump to fire him, citing what Tillis calls the most inept military management he has seen in eight years on the Armed Services Committee.

Tillis posted his broadside on X on Wednesday, hours before outgoing Army Secretary Dan Driscoll's last day at the Pentagon. The North Carolina Republican, who is not seeking re-election, accused Hegseth of driving out senior military talent, forcing flag officers into retirement, and leaving a leadership vacuum at the top of the armed forces. The post landed after Driscoll submitted his resignation to Trump on Monday, capping 18 months as the Army's top civilian official and what multiple reports describe as months of friction between Driscoll and Hegseth over the direction of Army reform.

The clash is no longer behind closed doors. A sitting Republican senator, one with direct oversight authority over military personnel policy, is telling a Republican president, in public, that his defense secretary is failing the troops. That makes this more than a personnel dispute. It is a test of whether the Pentagon's civilian leadership can retain the confidence of the party that controls the Senate.

Tillis accuses Hegseth of gutting the officer corps

Tillis did not hold back. In his post, he thanked Driscoll and credited both the outgoing secretary and Gen. Randy George, the former Army chief of staff whom Hegseth removed in April, with launching what Tillis called "a transformative period of innovation in how we array our forces and equip our Soldiers."

Then he turned on Hegseth directly:

"I served on Senate Armed Services for 8 years and as chair or ranking member of the Personnel and Readiness subcommittee. I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country."

Tillis went further, accusing the defense secretary of being threatened by capable subordinates rather than empowering them:

"He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force."

That language, "intimidated by competence", is a specific charge, not a generic complaint. Tillis is alleging that Hegseth's personnel decisions are driven by insecurity rather than strategy. He followed it with a pointed contrast: a defense secretary with the right priorities "would be fighting to retain talented leaders like Dan and the many flag officers he has forced into retirement." Instead, Tillis wrote, Hegseth "is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks."

This is not the first time Tillis has gone after Hegseth publicly. Back in May, the senator condemned Hegseth's handling of U.S. military posture in Europe, including the reported cancellation of a 4,000-troop deployment to Poland and the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany. Tillis called those moves "amateur hour at best and deadly at worst" and told Hegseth to "choose meritocracy over your mediocre yes-men."

That earlier clash centered on European force structure. The current one centers on something broader: whether Hegseth is systematically hollowing out the military's senior leadership.

Driscoll's exit follows months of reported clashes over Army reform

Driscoll submitted his resignation to Trump on Monday. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly praised the outgoing secretary that same day, saying he had provided "outstanding leadership during historic military operations" and had assisted with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he was "disappointed" by the departure.

On Tuesday, Driscoll posted on X that Wednesday would be his last day. He did not explain why he was leaving. He did, however, offer a public compliment to the man Tillis wants fired.

"We could not have made the progress we did without the support of Secretary Hegseth."

That statement sits uneasily alongside what sources told both CNN and Fox News: that Driscoll raised concerns in his resignation about Army transformation and readiness, and that Hegseth had been blocking those efforts by firing the generals responsible for carrying them out. If that account is accurate, Driscoll's public praise of Hegseth reads less like an endorsement and more like the diplomatic exit of a man who had already lost the internal fight.

Tillis credited Driscoll with pushing the Army to adapt to the kind of warfare seen in Ukraine and Iran, conflicts that have reshaped how militaries think about drones, precision fires, and force dispersal. The senator's argument is that Driscoll and Gen. George were doing exactly the kind of modernization work the Pentagon needs, and that Hegseth dismantled it by removing the people doing it.

The friction between Driscoll and Hegseth had been building for months before the resignation became official, with disagreements over the pace and direction of Army transformation at the center of the dispute.

CBS News counts at least 20 senior departures under Hegseth

Driscoll is not an isolated case. CBS News has counted at least 20 departures from the Pentagon's top ranks under Hegseth's tenure, spanning both uniformed commanders and civilian appointees. That number includes Gen. George's removal in April and, now, Driscoll's resignation.

Twenty senior departures is a staggering rate of turnover for any cabinet department. At the Pentagon, where institutional knowledge and continuity of command matter more than in most agencies, the cumulative effect is harder to absorb. Each departure removes not just a person but a network of relationships, plans in progress, and operational judgment built over decades of service.

Hegseth has also moved to block Army officers from promotion over their ties to ousted leaders, a step that extends the personnel upheaval beyond the generals already removed and into the next generation of senior officers.

The Washington Examiner reported that approximately 20 generals, admirals, and civilian defense leaders have been fired or left the department under Hegseth, corroborating the CBS News tally. The outlet also noted that Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said it was "far past time for President Trump to recognize the lasting harm that Pete Hegseth is inflicting on the Department of Defense."

Reed's criticism is expected, he is a Democrat. Tillis's is not. A Republican senator with eight years of direct oversight over military personnel, who voted to put Hegseth in the job, is now saying the appointment was a mistake. That carries a different weight on Capitol Hill.

White House stands behind Hegseth, for now

Fox News reported that the White House continues to express full confidence in Hegseth. Kelly's Monday statement praised Driscoll but made no mention of any friction with the defense secretary, framing the departure as a routine transition rather than a forced exit.

Driscoll's own public statement followed the same script. He credited Hegseth and offered no public grievance. But the gap between the official line and the sourced accounts of internal conflict is wide enough to notice.

Tillis, for his part, urged Trump directly to act. His post called on the president "to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it." As a retiring senator with no re-election to worry about, Tillis has less political risk in making the demand, but also less leverage to enforce it.

Democrats have their own plans for Hegseth. Some have openly discussed impeachment as a midterm agenda item, a move that would shift the fight from internal Republican politics to a partisan confrontation. That prospect may actually make it harder for Republicans to push Hegseth out, no one wants to hand Democrats a scalp.

Meanwhile, speculation about Hegseth's own political future has swirled in recent months, adding another layer of complication to a tenure already defined more by personnel fights than by policy wins.

Open questions the Pentagon has not answered

Several things remain unclear. Hegseth himself has not responded publicly to Tillis's call for his removal. The White House has not addressed the specific allegation that Hegseth blocked Army transformation efforts by firing the generals responsible. And the full contents of Driscoll's resignation letter, including whether it explicitly raised readiness concerns, have not been made public. The CNN account attributing those concerns to Driscoll relies on a single unnamed source.

What is clear is the math. At least 20 senior leaders gone. The Army secretary out after 18 months. The Army chief of staff removed in April. And now a Republican senator with direct jurisdiction over military personnel policy saying, on the record, that the defense secretary is unfit for the job he holds.

None of that proves Hegseth is wrong on every call. Reforming a bureaucracy as large and entrenched as the Pentagon sometimes means removing people who resist change. But reform requires replacing what you tear down with something better, not just with vacancies. When the people who were building the new thing are the same ones being pushed out, the word for that is not reform. It is disorder.

A strong military does not run on loyalty tests. It runs on competence, continuity, and trust. If the defense secretary cannot keep his own Army secretary in the building for more than 18 months, the problem is not the people leaving.