Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson is possibly facing an uncertain future in the Trump administration with reports emerging that she may be fired after the midterm elections in November for attempting to “undermine” President Donald Trump’s “Space Force” initiative.
Publicly, Wilson has expressed support of the initiative and last month she said she was “in complete alignment” with the President’s plans. But reports suggest the administration has had it with her attempts to “undermine this part of the President’s agenda from within.”
Not long after Wilson indicated she supported the Space Force launch, a memo was leaked estimating that it would involve 13,000 people and cost $13 billion over five years. “By the time [the administration] got this most recent memo with the cost estimate, they’d kind of already had it with her and the Air Force on this, and it just put them over the top,” a source told Foreign Policy.
Todd Harrison, a defense-budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the estimate an “example of malicious compliance” and an attempt to “shift the debate into how expensive this is going to be.”
Last month, an explosive new book by journalist Bob Woodward alleged that members of Trump’s Cabinet, including Mattis himself, are quietly trying to undercut or slow roll the President’s orders, claims corroborated by an anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times, which detailed similar resistance within the President’s administration.
Should Wilson be fired after the midterms, she may be replaced with Representative Mike Rogers, a long-time advocate of establishing a separate military entity to oversee space. The speculation was, however, shut down by the White House on Thursday, with spokeswoman Lindsay Walters saying there was “no discussion by the President to oust Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson,” and calling the reports “false.”
Be the first to comment