Pete Hegseth continues to face withering fire from Republicans who blame him for the GOP’s disastrous showing in the Nov. 3 elections. President Trump should “end the Iran war and stop listening to the warmongers,” Fred Fleitz, chief of staff at the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, wrote in an opinion column published on Friday, reported Bloomberg. Doing so means negotiating an exit and firing Hegseth, whom Fleitz called “the face of a war most Americans no longer support.”

Fleitz invoked the memory of 2006, when George W. Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld after the Republicans had taken an election drubbing due to the Iraq war. He also called for the firing of White House trade advisor Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as the architects of Trump’s unpopular tariff policy, which he called a “costly failure that has hurt the American people and damaged relations with our friends and allies.”

On Thursday, Hegseth fired back at his critics with a six-minute video on X defending his tenure. “A disgruntled, defeated congressman along with all his Democrat allies has also dropped [i.e., filed—ed.] sham articles of impeachment against yours truly,” he said, referring to Rep. Thomas Massie’s plans to push an impeachment vote when Congress reconvenes next week.