John Phelan sat in the lobby of the West Wing for more than an hour Wednesday night, waiting to see if his longtime friend and neighbor, President Trump, would save his job. He would leave disappointed.
That afternoon, Phelan, the Navy secretary, had received a phone call from his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asking for his resignation. Phelan had spent much of Wednesday on Capitol Hill, meeting with lawmakers about Navy shipbuilding and the Pentagon’s budget request.
A few miles away at the White House, another gathering was taking place that would decide his fate, according to U.S. officials. Hegseth and his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, made the argument to Trump that Phelan wasn’t moving quickly enough on Trump’s shipbuilding priorities, especially the “Golden Fleet” and increasing reliance on the use of steam. The Navy, they determined, needed new leadership.
Phelan made a round of calls, including to the president’s executive assistant, saying he needed to speak with Trump. Phelan then headed to the White House. Once the president had a spare minute Wednesday evening, Phelan asked to keep his job, but the commander in chief backed Hegseth’s decision, according to a senior administration official.
The episode is a sign that Hegseth retains Trump’s support despite recent high-level personnel churn at the Pentagon. In signing off on Phelan’s dismissal, the president sided with Hegseth over a personal friend and neighbor who raised millions of dollars for his campaign. Trump instructed the Pentagon chief to handle Phelan’s firing, administration officials said.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump praised his friend, but said, “He’s a hard charger and he had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying their ships. I’m very aggressive in the new shipbuilding, and somehow he just didn’t get along with them.”
The ousting came as a shock to Phelan and his most senior aides, who learned about the dismissal from a social-media posting by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announcing the decision Wednesday, according to U.S. officials. In the same posting, Parnell said Hung Cao, the undersecretary of the Navy, would serve as the acting secretary.
Hegseth’s rapid-fire reshuffling of some of the Pentagon’s top leaders in recent weeks has caused concern at a precarious moment, according to U.S. officials, as America enforces a naval blockade of Iranian ports. While the Navy secretary isn’t in the operational chain of command, Phelan played a significant role as the Defense Department was asking for its biggest budget request in history.
Some officials in the West Wing are frustrated with Hegseth over the firings, especially as the Navy enforces the complex blockade of Iranian ports, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Trump’s support of the abrupt firing has led many to question who could be next on Hegseth’s chopping block. The Pentagon secretary earlier this month fired the Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, and has clashed with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a close ally of Vice President JD Vance. It comes as Trump is seeing turnover in his cabinet, losing a labor secretary, an attorney general and a homeland security secretary in a short time.
Phelan said in a statement that serving as Navy secretary was “the honor of my life.”
He added: “Leadership at this level isn’t without its challenges. Decision-making can be slowed by caution, competing equities, and internal friction. But our mission demands clarity, urgency, and results—and I never lost sight of that.”
Phelan’s push to speak to Trump directly before accepting the decision, according to people familiar with the matter, points to one reason he was fired in the first place: refusing to acknowledge the chain of command. That was unacceptable to the president, those people said. The White House had clashed with Phelan over various issues, including a list of Medal of Honor recipients that the president wanted, the senior administration official said.
Phelan’s dismissal follows months of tensions with Hegseth and Feinberg, including over Phelan’s close relationship with Trump, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The two Pentagon leaders were particularly annoyed when Phelan pitched the idea for a modern battleship directly to the president, bypassing Hegseth.
Hegseth and Feinberg have worked to sideline Phelan in recent months by taking away authority that normally would belong to the Navy secretary, according to people familiar with the matter. Last year Feinberg created the post of czar for submarine acquisition, reporting directly to him. That portfolio typically sits within the Navy, the people said. Feinberg in addition typically didn’t invite Phelan to his frequent meetings with top shipbuilding executives, according to one of the people familiar with the meetings.
Unlike with Phelan, Trump hasn’t often explicitly thanked other senior leaders that Hegseth has fired, a sign of Phelan’s strong relationship with the president. Phelan’s Florida home is just down the street from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, where the two regularly have dinner. Phelan told lawmakers last year that he exchanged texts with the president about shipbuilding in the middle of the night.
Write to Lara Seligman at [email protected], Josh Dawsey at [email protected], Alexander Ward at [email protected] and Natalie Andrews at [email protected]
🚨 BREAKING: Watch the full clip here ➤
