Three whole weeks had gone by without Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth firing a leading U.S. military official during a war, but the streak came to an abrupt end on Wednesday afternoon. MS NOW reported:

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan is leaving the Trump administration, the Pentagon announced [Wednesday].

‘Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately,’ Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement [Wednesday] afternoon.

......But stepping back, the defense secretary’s insecurities are just a small piece of a larger, troubling story.

First, it’s worth emphasizing that Phelan was a curious choice for Navy secretary in the first place. He never served in the Navy and had no connection to the Navy or the U.S. Armed Forces before the president tapped him for the role. The gig appears to have been a reward for being Trump’s pal who helped raise a lot of money for the Republican’s 2024 campaign.

Second, the timing of his ouster is extraordinary: Barely a week after the administration announced a naval blockade in the Middle East, the Pentagon ousted its Navy secretary.

Third, Trump has had a rather extraordinary run of Navy secretaries during his tenure. In the president’s first term, six different men held the role — the most in American history across a single term — and with Phelan gone, the list continues to grow even longer.

Fourth, let’s not overlook the fact that Phelan was fired for reportedly upsetting Hegseth, as opposed to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. As viewers of “The Rachel Maddow Show” might recall, Phelan was listed in Epstein’s flight logs and appeared to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Epstein. These revelations reached the public two months ago, though Team Trump quickly shrugged them off.

And finally, there’s the overall scope of the Pentagon purge. Just three weeks before Phelan’s ouster, Hegseth also fired his Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, the Army’s top officer, even as the war in Iran raged on. MS NOW confirmed that two other Army generals were fired alongside George: Gen. David Hodne, the head of Army Transformation and Training Command, and Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the 26th chief of chaplains.....

In fact, the New York Times reported in November that Hegseth had fired or sidelined dozens of officials “with little explanation,” creating “an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust” within the department. Politico published a similar report the month before, noting that the secretary’s firings have “injected a fresh wave of fear into the Pentagon over the cost of speaking up and who might be next.”

About a year ago, five former defense secretaries, including retired Gen. Jim Mattis, Donald Trump’s first defense secretary, condemned the pattern of firings as “reckless.” Their joint letter, addressed to Congress, asked the House and Senate to hold “immediate hearings to assess the national security implications” of the dismissals. Hegseth and the administration appear to have ignored those concerns; the purge is still going on; and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have scheduled no such hearings.