Donald Trump was blindsided by the bad news from this so-called Republican Senator.
Now President-elect Trump could be facing a rebellion inside the Republican Party.
And this RINO turncoat just stabbed Donald Trump in the back in one unthinkable way.
Senate RINOs working to sink Donald Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth
President-elect Donald Trump won 77,000,000 million votes on the way to leading the GOP to the most sweeping election victory since 1980.
Trump won because of his America First agenda which included a foreign policy that seeks to end the endless wars the Democrats and GOP establishment support in Ukraine and the Middle East.
But some dinosaurs in the Senate GOP caucus still think they can drag the party back to the days when Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Liz Cheney called the shots.
Two of those RINOs are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Joni Ernst of Iowa.
Sean Davis of the Federalist recently reported that both Graham and Ernst are actively working to sabotage the nomination of Pete Hegseth to serve as Trump’s Secretary of Defense.
“Sources with direct knowledge tell me this story is nonsense and indicate they’ve had enough with games being played on Hegseth’s Defense nomination by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina,” Davis wrote on X.
Davis explained that Graham and Ernst want to stop Hegseth because Hegseth opposes the forever war in Ukraine and will help Donald Trump negotiate a peace deal.
“One source said Graham, who has never found a war he didn’t want other people to fight, spent the weekend crying to Trump about Hegseth, while Ernst has been running an inside-the-beltway campaign to knife Hegseth,” Davis added.
“Sources say the WSJ article touting DeSantis is a key part of the Ernst/Graham operation to torpedo Hegseth because of his foreign policy views and opposition to endless, pointless wars,” Davis added.
Ernst has latched on to a fake scandal where a woman made false allegations of rape against Hegseth – the police and district attorney investigated the claims and found no basis to press charges – to try and blow up Hegseth’s nomination.
Hegseth met with Ernst but Ernst refused to endorse his nomination.
“I appreciate Pete Hegseth’s service to our country, something we both share. Today, as part of the confirmation process, we had a frank and thorough conversation,” Ernst wrote on X.
Davis responded to Ernst and wrote that Ernst should have disclosed the fact that she is trying to take out Hegseth to clear the way for Trump to name her as Secretary of Defense.
“If you had a ‘frank and thorough conversation,’ why did you not disclose to Hegseth your repeated calls to Trump prior to the meeting urging him to dump Hegseth? Did you similarly fail to tell him how you dispatched Lindsey Graham last weekend to tell Trump to dump Hegseth and nominate you instead?” Davis posted.
A subsequent report in The Federalist detailed the lengths Ernst went to pester Trump to name her Secretary of Defense.
“Ernst’s efforts included personal calls to Trump to urge him to dump Hegseth ahead of her meeting with the Army veteran on Wednesday afternoon. Ernst did not tell Hegseth during her meeting with him about her efforts to derail his nomination,” the Federalist exclusively reported.
One source close to Trump even described Ernst’s campaign against Hegseth as “jihad.”
“She’s waging a campaign to replace Pete with herself,” the source told the Federalist.
Iowa Senator’s gun-grabbing record resurfaces
But Ernst’s efforts may be backfiring miserably.
Because Ernst is starting to get on Trump’s nerves with her repeated calls to lobby for the Secretary of Defense job.
“She’s constantly calling and nagging him,” the source told The Federalist.
Joni Ernst is up for re-election in 2026.
Ernst already enraged conservatives by voting for Joe Biden’s red flag gun confiscation funding bill in 2022.
And by opposing Trump’s nominees, she is all but certain to face a primary challenger.
