Pete Hegseth vs. Dan Driscoll: Inside Their Bitter Feud

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was attending a White House reception when news began circulating privately about yet another high-level exit from the Trump administration.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation to President Donald Trump after months of mounting pressure from Hegseth, according to four sources familiar with the relationship who spoke to the Daily Mail. The move brought an end to an internal feud that sources described as increasingly personal, bitter and vindictive.

Driscoll’s decision followed his complaints to Trump that Hegseth’s aggressive approach had pushed out key officials he believed were essential to advancing his planned military reforms. Trump offered Driscoll the option of remaining in the post through the midterm elections, but Driscoll opted to leave earlier.

Driscoll publicly confirmed his resignation Tuesday night, describing his time in the role as “the honor of a lifetime” and expressing gratitude to Army soldiers for their service and sacrifice.

“They have inspired me every day,” he said.

Although Driscoll thanked Hegseth for his ‘support,’ of his reforms, the Secretary of War did not respond in kind. 

Driscoll’s friendship with Vance was widely seen as the catalyst for landing the Army job after Trump’s re-election.

‘That never sat right with Hegseth,’ one source familiar with the conflict told the Daily Mail.

Vance and Driscoll’s friendship goes back to Yale in 2011, when Vance, a Marine veteran, invited younger veterans like Driscoll, who served in Army combat, out for pizza to brief them on what to expect. 

Driscoll and his wife Cassie became family friends of the Vances, and the couples have vacationed together.

Fast forward 15 years, now both found themselves in a knife-fight with an ambitious and unlikely Pentagon leader. 

Hegseth slowly came to suspect Driscoll was ‘acting like an independent power’, a Washington source familiar with their relationship said, and grew increasingly ‘paranoid,’ according to another. 

The friction turned sharp when Trump asked Driscoll, not Hegseth, to help negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, handing the Army Secretary a direct line to the Oval Office that ran around his own boss. 

The two men never fit together. Hegseth was brash and aggressive, shoving aside anyone he suspected of disloyalty. Driscoll built alliances with the Army’s generals.

‘It was like putting two scorpions in a box,’ a source familiar with the relationship told the Daily Mail.

Before long, each suspected the other of knifing him in the media. 

The Pentagon has been investigating leaks in response to negative news coverage about Hegseth’s leadership since last year, and just this week it was reported that dozens of members of the US military’s Joint Staff had been subjected to polygraph tests over suspected leaks.

During his tenure, Driscoll’s allies believed that Hegseth’s team was feeding damaging material about him to right-wing influencers to poison his standing with the president.

In April, details surfaced online of Driscoll’s wife donating to Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander, who is married to Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser.

A photo of Driscoll jogging with Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman became another flashpoint. Vindman was among the officials who raised alarms over Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which triggered Trump’s first impeachment.

Then came Laura Loomer. The right-wing influencer accused Driscoll of ‘constant screw ups’ and of ‘orchestrating a coup’ against Hegseth, posts Driscoll’s allies read as a campaign to force him out, or at least bring him to heel.

The Department of War denies Hegseth or his team had any hand in the leaks.

The fight never stayed between the two men. It bled into Hegseth’s relationship with the vice president, two sources told the Daily Mail.

Vance and Hegseth have long differed over the use of military force, a split laid bare in the leaked ‘Signalgate’ chat among Trump officials over strikes on Yemen. Vance counseled caution about triggering a broader conflict with Iran, while Hegseth played cheerleader.

Then Hegseth delivered what sounded like a stump speech in Iowa in the middle of that conflict.

‘He was trying to get ahead of Vance,’ one Vance ally told the Daily Mail.

Reports that Hegseth is weighing a presidential run, published by NBC News last weekend, only added to the tension, though Hegseth has denied any interest in a presidential bid.

Yet inside the White House, officials joke about ‘President Pete,’ a source familiar with those conversations said.

‘He’s giving speeches at campaign rallies. It looks like he’s plotting to run himself,’ said Kevin Carroll, a retired Army Reserve colonel who served in the Office of the Secretary of War.

A Hegseth campaign would put him directly against Vance, and some in the administration read the Driscoll fight as the first casualty of that ambition.

‘If the Secretary of Defense wants to run for president against the Vice President, I guess you have to take out an ally of the Vice President who’s serving in the service right in front of you,’ one former Department of War official said.

Both offices reject it.

‘It’s clear these ‘sources’ have no idea what they are talking about. The Vice President and Secretary Hegseth are close friends working in lockstep to execute the President’s national security priorities,’ a spokesperson for Vance’s office told the Daily Mail.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the two were ‘100 percent united in executing President Trump’s America First agenda,’ dismissing a story ‘fueled by anonymous sources’ as an attempt to ‘sow division where none exists.’

Asked Thursday about a possible Hegseth campaign, Vance said any Republican thinking of running should be ‘focused on the midterms.’ He called Driscoll and Hegseth both friends, said both were good at their jobs, and backed the Secretary of War’s push for a ‘culture shift’ at the Pentagon.

Privately, a former Trump official said, Vance sympathized with his friend’s reasons for leaving but never challenged Hegseth’s leadership. The two share most of the same allies in Washington and work in tandem, another source said.

But Driscoll continued to draw Hegseth’s wrath for actions that he believed were outside of the Secretary of the Army’s purview. 

Driscoll also resisted Hegseth’s demands to remove Army generals in his orbit. 

So Hegseth moved without him. He has so far removed or stopped the promotions of at least 80 generals, admirals and other officials, the New York Times reports. 

In April 2026, while Driscoll was on a family vacation in North Carolina, Hegseth forced out Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, Army Transformation and Training Command chief General David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr, the chief of chaplains.

They were not the first, and they were not the last. General James Mingus was pushed out last fall. General Christopher Donahue, head of US Army Europe and Africa, was forced into early retirement in June.

The Army is now down to five four-star generals on active duty, from ten when Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon.

Firing Driscoll himself was never on the table. Driscoll’s friendship with the vice president protected him, and the White House told Hegseth outright that removing him was not an option, a former White House official told the Daily Mail. 

But Hegseth and his allies could still make his life miserable. The mockery had a bitter edge, because Driscoll was popular. 

Appointed at 38, he won over Department of War staff fast.

‘Driscoll had an amazing reputation. I think, ultimately, there’s a difference between looking the part and doing the part, and Driscoll got results,’ a former military officer told the Daily Mail.

Behind his back, Hegseth’s allies seized on interviews in which Driscoll said he ‘desperately’ hoped his seven-year-old daughter Laya would one day pass the Army Ranger course. They cast the wish as ‘woke.’

They also circulated a video of Driscoll as a young second lieutenant in Iraq wishing his family ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than Merry Christmas.

That was the last straw, sources told the Daily Mail, and Driscoll began looking for an exit.

Driscoll, through the Department of Army, did not respond to a Daily Mail request for comment. 

His departure has become a rallying point for Department of War employees worn down by Hegseth’s leadership, and some are beginning to push back. 

Retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis used the occasion to call on Trump to replace his Secretary of War.

It is reaching the ranks, too. Many soldiers cheered Hegseth’s appointment. That is changing, a source told the Daily Mail.

‘At the end of the day, a lot of the stuff that happens in DC is not something that we feel, because the leaders try to shield the force,’ a former military officer said. ‘They are feeling it now.’