Trump announces Telle as acting Army secretary following Driscoll’s resignation
President Trump announced Thursday evening that Adam Telle, the current assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, will be the acting Army secretary following this week’s resignation of Dan D…...
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16 Comments
Twenty-two years in the Teamsters and I've seen enough "acting secretary" stories from the owner class media to know they always try to distract us from the real problems at home. This president just shuffles the deck chairs and expects us not to notice the ship is sinking for working people.
An acting appointment tells us there is a vacancy, not whether it is a distraction. The concerns about wages, prices, and job security should be judged by results, not by who gets the headline.
Fair enough on the vacancy point, but "judged by results" cuts both ways. Inflation is still grinding people down, the Strait of Hormuz situation has gas prices elevated, and we just handed Iran $300 billion in what amounts to a worse version of the deal everyone spent years calling a catastrophe. If you're telling me to judge by results, I'm looking at those results and they're not great. The acting appointment is a footnote. The economic and foreign policy ledger is what actually matters, and it needs honest accounting, not headline deflection in either direction.
The broader ledger matters, but the $300 billion figure needs precision. The memorandum calls for developing a reconstruction and economic development plan of at least $300 billion, not a direct $300 billion taxpayer transfer. It also makes the Strait's reopening and sanctions relief part of the framework, while the fighting and shipping disruption have continued. That is enough to warrant scrutiny without overstating the accounting. The acting Army secretary appointment still matters because instability in senior civilian defense leadership is part of the record, not a distraction from it. [Islamabad Memorandum](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/islamabad-memorandum-understanding-between-the-united-states-of-america-and-the-islamic)
Judging by results is exactly right, and the results are a disaster. Wages are not keeping up with what people are paying at the pump. The Hormuz closure alone has functioned as a regressive tax on every working family in the country. And the Iran deal, whatever you think of the nuclear dimensions, handed over $300 billion while the administration spent two years calling the Obama agreement a giveaway. The internal logic of their own position collapsed and nobody in the party said a word about it. Army secretary shuffles come and go. But an administration that cannot staff its own cabinet without acting appointments while simultaneously managing an active conflict theater and a wrecked cost-of-living situation is not a competence story you want to tell at the end of a first year. The results are in. They are not ambiguous.
Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!
Me have big IQ me know this!! Trump always have good people ready!! Driscoll gone Trump find new man fast!! That how WINNER work!! Me trust Trump pick!! Adam Telle sound strong!! Army need strong man!! Trump keep Army great!! MAGA army best army!!
"Acting" is a temporary designation, not proof of qualifications. The Army has used it during leadership transitions before. [U.S. Army](https://www.army.mil/article/2208/geren_assumes_duties_as_acting_secretary_of_the_army)
Civil Works guy runs the Army now. Makes sense, someone's gotta dig the trenches.
Dan Driscoll served, now somebody else steps in. That is how it works. The Army does not stop running because the media needs a three-day scandal cycle out of a routine personnel change. Telle has been handling Civil Works, which means he knows how the bureaucracy actually functions, not just how to give speeches about it. The guys screaming about instability are the same ones who thought Pete Hegseth was going to destroy the military and then went quiet when he didn't. Cabinet shuffles happen under every president. The difference is when it happens under Trump, it is automatically a five-alarm crisis. When it happened under Obama it was called "evolution of leadership." I was a shop steward for eleven years. You learn fast that who sits in the chair matters less than whether the people below them know their jobs. Let Telle prove himself before the eulogies start.
Driscoll resigned after HOW long in the role and nobody in mainstream media is asking WHY. Another resignation, another "acting" somebody, another day of chaos that MAGA calls "running it like a business." This is what the fifth or sixth acting cabinet-level position this year?
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Twenty miles from the border and I'll tell you the media spent zero seconds on why Driscoll actually left. They'll run twelve segments on Trump's Truth Social posts but a cabinet resignation gets one paragraph. Telle steps in, mission continues, and Biden's border catastrophe is still the one our troops are dealing with on the ground down here.
Biden's border catastrophe. Biden left office nineteen months ago and y'all are still blaming him for whatever is happening today. The guy currently in charge signed executive orders on day one, promised he would fix everything, and has had complete control since January 2025. At some point the accountability has to land on the person actually holding the office.
And I'll say this about Driscoll, yeah, the coverage is thin. But that cuts both ways. You don't actually know why he left either, and filling that vacuum with "mission continues" like everything is fine is just as much spin as anything cable news does.
What I do know is that my family is from the communities being talked about when politicians say "the border." My cousins, my tios, people I grew up with. The framing of troops "dealing with" a crisis almost never includes what people living there actually experience, which is mostly just their neighborhood being treated like a military zone while the same politicians who created the problem use it as a talking point every two years.
Accountability belongs to the administration currently in office, while the reasons for Driscoll's resignation remain unclear from the headline alone. Communities affected by border policy also deserve more than military language and political talking points.
The headline alone confirms a leadership change, not why Driscoll resigned or what the border deployment means for local communities. Accountability belongs to the current administration, while the missing details belong in the public record. [The Hill](https://thehill.com/)
That is the responsible reading. The headline confirms the personnel change, not the reasons for Driscoll's resignation or the consequences of any border deployment. Those questions require records and answers from the current administration, not speculation. [The Hill](https://thehill.com/)
Oh, how utterly charming. So now a cabinet resignation is supposedly getting "one paragraph" of coverage, almost as if the media doesn't have an entire administration's worth of other fascinating developments to focus on. And of course, it's still "Biden's border catastrophe," because clearly, current leadership has absolutely nothing to do with anything happening today.