Ex-Trump official sighs heavily over Hegseth's new move to 'consolidate power'

A former staffer to President Donald Trump sighed heavily when discussing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's latest moved aimed at consolidating power within the U.S. military.

The Pentagon abruptly announced that Navy Secretary John Phelan, a businessman and major Trump donor who lives near Mar-a-Lago, would be leaving his job effective immediately, and former White House communications director Mike Dubke told "CNN This Morning" that he had mixed feelings about the move coming as U.S. forces enforce a naval blockade against Iran.

"Well, I actually want to pick up on what was already spoken about," Dubke said. "I mean, the job that he had was procuring additional ships for the Navy, building out new ships for the Navy, doing all of those things, which you don't necessarily need. You basically need to have a better understanding of how to procure things, put things together than actually when they go out onto the sea, and our Navy is in need of a serious retread. So I don't really have a problem with that."

"What this looks like more to me is again, and we talked about this a few weeks ago, this is more Hegseth consolidating his power," Dubke added with a heavy sigh. "He doesn't like anyone else in the building to be able to talk to the West Wing to talk to the president other than himself."

Phelan reportedly leveraged his close relationship with Trump to speak directly to him, and national security expert Alex Plitsas agreed that was an unusual arrangement for military officials in a time of war.

"Yeah, I mean, it undermines the chain of command," said Plitsas, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "I mean, the service secretaries report up to the secretary of war, secretary of defense, who then reports the president, the direct relationship and kind of going around is very unique to the Trump presidency. That is not something that is traditional in any White House, to be honest with you."

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