Newsmax host Greg Kelly launched a blistering public attack on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday, calling him a "DESPICABLE guy" and an "Insecure FAKE" over the sudden ouster of Navy Secretary John Phelan, a rare broadside from a conservative media figure against a senior member of the Trump administration.
Kelly's criticism, posted on X, came just two days after Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell announced that Phelan would be departing the administration effective immediately after serving as Navy secretary for just 13 months. An administration official told The Hill that Phelan was "asked to step down."
The episode marks the first time a service secretary has been removed during President Trump's second term, and it lands in the middle of an ambitious shipbuilding push that the Navy can ill afford to see disrupted by internal feuding.
A former U.S. official told The Hill that the firing was related to shipbuilding efforts. That tracks with broader reporting from multiple outlets. Fox News reported Thursday that tensions between Phelan and Hegseth had been simmering for months, with officials saying frustrations centered partly on Phelan's handling of major Navy shipbuilding programs, which faced delays and cost overruns.
One major flashpoint, Fox News reported, came after Hegseth fired Phelan's chief of staff, John Harrison, in October 2025. Navy insiders described the tensions as partly personal, saying Hegseth grew frustrated that Phelan at times bypassed him and took issues directly to Trump.
A senior administration official told the New York Post that "President Trump and Secretary Hegseth agreed new leadership at the Navy is needed." A GOP source familiar with Phelan's standing at the Pentagon put it more bluntly: "When you combine incompetence with arrogance, it usually doesn't end well."
Phelan was criticized internally for not moving fast enough on Trump's "Golden Fleet" shipbuilding initiative, which envisions a new class of battleships built by 2028. The Navy is seeking $377 billion in next year's budget, with more than $65.8 billion earmarked for shipbuilding to produce 18 warships. Those are serious numbers, and serious deadlines that demand a secretary who can deliver.
Hegseth's broader overhaul of Pentagon leadership has been well documented. He has dismissed more than two dozen senior military officers since the start of 2025, and Phelan's exit fits a pattern of the Defense Secretary moving quickly to install leaders he believes will execute the administration's agenda.
Greg Kelly did not limit himself to policy disagreements. He called Hegseth a "DESPICABLE guy" and an "Insecure FAKE" who "can't remove his Real Nemesis, the Army Secretary", a reference to Army Secretary Dan Discroll. Kelly accused Hegseth of doing something other than the "DECENT thing" and said he "blows up Someone Else's life bc he can't Handle his own."
"Not CUTE anymore," Kelly added.
Those are personal shots, not policy arguments. And they landed without much factual scaffolding. Kelly did not explain what specific policy failure justified his outrage, nor did he address the shipbuilding delays and chain-of-command issues that multiple officials cited as the reason for Phelan's removal.
The Washington Post, cited by Newsmax's own reporting, said Phelan "was forced out after repeated clashes with Hegseth and Feinberg over his management of shipbuilding and a variety of other issues." Axios reported that Phelan caused friction because Hegseth believed he bypassed the chain of command too often with a direct line to Trump. Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg shared those concerns.
If Phelan was going around the Defense Secretary to reach the president, that is not a personality dispute. That is a breakdown in the chain of command, exactly the kind of dysfunction that undermines a department managing a $377 billion Navy budget and an active military campaign in the Middle East.
Hegseth has defended the administration's Iran campaign as an overwhelming success while simultaneously overhauling Pentagon leadership. Whether one agrees with every personnel move or not, the pattern reflects an effort to impose accountability on a defense bureaucracy that has resisted reform for decades.
Kelly's attack also arrived against the backdrop of a separate controversy: the state of Pentagon press briefings under Hegseth's revamped media policy.
Last fall, Hegseth made several changes to the department's media policy, restricting journalists' access to the Pentagon. The new policy required media outlets to pledge not to obtain or use any unauthorized material, even if the information was unclassified. Every major television network, wire service, publication, and radio outlet refused to sign and turned in their press badges.
That standoff has had consequences. With traditional defense reporters locked out, non-traditional outlets have filled the vacuum. During Friday's briefing, Hegseth took two questions from TMZ. The exchange was not exactly a model of defense journalism.
TMZ correspondent Jacob Wasserman asked Hegseth: "I've heard you talk a lot about bombing people and places, and when you give these orders to carry out this extreme level of violence, what's going through your mind and your body?" He continued: "Do you have, like, an adrenaline rush? Are you scared? Do you feel like you're on a power trip? Just walk us through and paint us a picture of what it feels like mentally and physically."
That is what passes for Pentagon press coverage when the traditional press corps walks out over a policy dispute. The question read more like a celebrity interview than anything resembling national security reporting.
Newsmax's own national security reporter, Carla Babb, noticed the problem. She wrote on X urging Hegseth to "please consider" calling on reporters who regularly cover the Defense Department. A federal judge recently invalidated the Pentagon's press credential policy, adding legal pressure to an already contentious situation.
"It is apparent the majority of reporters called upon at the Pentagon briefing don't cover the Pentagon regularly...maybe TMZ questions like that won't happen if the reporters in the back, who've covered the Pentagon for years, get called upon?"
Babb's criticism was measured and specific. She identified a real problem, that Pentagon briefings are less useful when the people asking questions do not know the subject, and offered a practical solution. That is a far cry from Kelly's personal broadside.
Phelan's departure adds to an already long list of senior personnel changes under Hegseth. Breitbart reported that Parnell, in announcing the departure, said: "On behalf of the Secretary of War and Deputy Secretary of War, we are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy." Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao was named acting secretary.
Critics will point to the churn and call it chaos. But the administration's defenders argue that Trump's shipbuilding vision, a "Golden Fleet" of next-generation warships, requires leaders who can move at the pace the president demands. Phelan, by multiple accounts, was not that leader.
Hegseth has also removed other senior officials across the department, including in the Army's public affairs office, as part of a broader effort to reshape the Pentagon's leadership culture. Whether that effort produces results or merely instability is a fair question, one that the next Navy secretary will help answer.
Greg Kelly is entitled to his opinion. But the facts surrounding Phelan's departure, the shipbuilding delays, the chain-of-command problems, the bypassing of the Defense Secretary to reach the Oval Office, suggest this was not a capricious firing. Multiple officials across the administration, including the president himself, agreed the change was necessary.
The more pressing concern is not whether Phelan deserved to go. It is whether the Pentagon can stabilize its leadership fast enough to deliver on a $65.8 billion shipbuilding agenda with a 2028 deadline bearing down. That is a question TMZ will not be asking, and one that conservative media figures would serve their audiences better by focusing on.
Personnel is policy. And right now, the policy is to build ships, not to protect bureaucratic feelings.
