EJECTOR SEAT

Pentagon Pete’s Purge Chaos Spirals With Top General’s Shock Exit

The increasingly paranoid defense secretary just canned one of the top military officials responsible for helping Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced out another senior military official in his paranoid purge of the Pentagon’s top brass.

Four-star General Chris “C.D.” Donahue, 56, who, as the Army’s chief official in Europe and Africa, has been instrumental in helping Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, has filed to retire and will leave his post within days.

Donahue, a special forces veteran who was famously the very last service member to depart Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal under Joe Biden, had once been tipped to run the entire Army but is now one of the most senior names on a lengthening list of officers shown the door under Hegseth, as The Atlantic first reported.

The general had clashed with the secretary before opting to retire, according to CBS News, which said the Army confirmed July 2 as his final day after just a year and a half leading U.S. forces in Europe and Africa. Armed forces officials thanked him for his service in a clipped statement and tapped his deputy, Major General Christopher Norrie, to fill in.

Brett McGurk, a former special presidential envoy who steered the campaign against Islamic State under Obama and during Trump’s first term, told CBS that “there are few people more responsible for the defeat of ISIS than Chris Donahue,” and that “he is among the most consequential commanders of his generation.”

The exit extends a clear-out that has thinned the Pentagon’s upper echelons since Trump returned to office in January 2025. Hegseth pushed out the Army’s most senior general, Randy George, in the spring—a move The Financial Times reports stirred resentment in the ranks. George’s job had notably been to rebuild air-defense stockpiles that the president’s war with Iran had depleted.

The roll call of canned veteran leaders runs long. It includes Air Force General and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown, along with Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who was the first woman to run the Navy, as well as ex-National Security Agency chief General Timothy Haugh and former top NATO liaison Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield.

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Officers are clear-eyed about the danger that Hegseth’s purges pose to national security, having cost the Defense Department decades of combined experience and expertise. “It’s interesting that the guy who says he wants to bring back the warrior culture is expunging the biggest warriors in the Army ranks,” one retired service member told The Atlantic.

“This is not a war on woke,” they added. “This is a war on warriors.”

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Other former top officers told the FT that an increasingly paranoid Hegseth has fostered an atmosphere of fear and intimidation that has reached the highest ranks at the Pentagon. The dismissals have gathered speed since last year’s Signal leak, when Hegseth unwittingly shared sensitive airstrike details with a journalist who had accidentally been added to a group chat with multiple ranking members of the Trump cabinet.

That snafu has fed what detractors describe as a hardening bunker mentality at the top of Hegseth’s department. But not all officers dismissed by the secretary have gone quietly into the night. Nancy Lacore, a 35-year Navy veteran cut loose last August as Hegseth removed officials whose intelligence assessments had irritated the president, has since secured a Democratic ticket in South Carolina and is now running for Congress, The New York Times reports.

Hegseth’s stewardship has supplied no shortage of oddities to accompany the purges. He has repeatedly joined rank-and-file troops for fitness drills in front of the cameras, ordered a makeup space installed at the Pentagon for touch-ups ahead of press appearances, put up photographs of his wife in official areas, and curbed access for reporters and photographers whose work he finds unflattering.

The Daily Beast contacted the Defense Department for comment on this story. The Pentagon deferred questions to the Army.

“The Army thanks Gen. Donahue for his leadership of U.S. Army Europe and Africa,” spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said.

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