Newsmax's Greg Kelly on Navy Secretary John Phelan's firing: “It's not an opportune time”
Kelly: “I've had my differences with Pete Hegseth, but however, I have to bet that he had a very good reason to jettison this guy, at this moment”
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From the April 22, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
GREG KELLY (HOST): Well, this is big and unexpected. Kind of inside the Beltway, but kind of not.
That is John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, who has just been fired by the secretary of war. Phelan, the SecNav is out. Now, what is the secretary of the Navy? Well, it's not really an operational role. He wouldn't be involved in planning the blockade or monitoring it or anything like that. He's more about procurement and, well, a lot of other issues for the Department of the Navy. And Hegseth just fired him.
Now, a couple of things. Here he is with the secretary back in Mar-a-Lago. Now, I've had my differences with Pete Hegseth, but however, I have to bet that he had a very good reason to jettison this guy, at this moment. It's not an opportune time. You know, was he showing up drunk at work? Probably not. But was he doing something that was undermining the war effort? Was he leaking? Was he — I cannot imagine that this was not approved by President Trump. And with that, it is probably a righteous firing.
Let me take a look at Phelan again. He had never served in the Navy, never served in uniform. But that is not a deal breaker. Let's go ahead and take a — yeah, there he is. Take it full, if you don't mind. I think he had a background in finance. He did very, very well on Wall Street. Wanted to serve. Had the job for a little over a year I believe. And now he's out in the middle of war.
Now, there's all kinds of murmurings that — well, I won't even go into it. All right. I'm hearing a little bit of everything. I do know that during the first term, there was open revolt against President Trump and some of the political appointees as well. I hope that's not happening this time. I am only left to speculate what happened last time. We'll see. All right? It's said he left immediately, right? No 30 days notice, no two weeks notice. John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, is out, right in the middle of a war.