{"id":8444,"date":"2026-05-22T16:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/8444\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T16:00:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:00:25","slug":"trump-forced-to-set-hegseth-move-straight-after-poland-troop-deployment-blunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/8444\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump forced to set Hegseth move straight after Poland troop deployment blunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a> has reversed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s plan to cancel deployment of 5,000 U.S. troops<\/a> to a base in Poland<\/a>, citing the election of a president aligned with the right-wing Law and Justice party last August.<\/p>\n

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said <\/a>he was \u201cpleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland\u201d and added that he was doing so \u201cbased on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his announcement countermanded an earlier one from Hegseth\u2019s Pentagon to hold back a planned rotation of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division for a nine-month stay at a U.S. base on Polish territory. That decision followed Hegseth\u2019s order to withdraw 5,000 more U.S. personnel from bases in Germany to punish that country after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly criticized the U.S. handling of the three-month-old war with Iran.<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s surprise cancellation of the troop rotation had concerned American officials, including members of Congress, who had expressed surprise that the Trump administration would pull U.S. forces from Poland and groused about not being consulted on the decision beforehand.<\/p>\n

Poland\u2019s government has not criticized the war in Iran, and Warsaw has the highest defense budget in Europe as a percentage of GDP.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The president reversed the defense secretary’s directive to cancel deployment of 5,000 troops to the NATO ally’s territory (Getty)<\/p>\n

Democratic and Republican lawmakers criticized the reductions as sending the wrong signal both to allies and Russian President Vladimir Putin as he continues his assault on Ukraine in the 4-year-old war.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said his committee was \u201cnot happy\u201d about the decision during a hearing with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and acting Army Chief of Staff General Christopher LaNeve last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on here, but I just tell you we\u2019re not happy with what\u2019s being talked about, particularly since there\u2019s been no statutory consultation with us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Vice President J.D. Vance<\/a>, a longtime skeptic of the U.S. presence in Europe and a critic of NATO, told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that the decision to not deploy the extra forces had been \u201ca very small and very minor thing\u201d while accusing European media of \u201coverreacting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve not reduced the troop levels in Poland by 4,000 troops. What we did is that we delayed a troop deployment that was going to go to Poland. That\u2019s not a reduction, that\u2019s just a standard delay and rotation that sometimes happens in these situations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Days later, Trump reportedly made the decision to overrule Hegseth and communicated his displeasure to the Pentagon boss in a phone call that was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, Trump told Hegseth that America should not mistreat Warsaw considering it is a strong U.S. ally with close ties to the administration.<\/p>\n

In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said Trump \u201cappreciates all the secretary has done\u2014and will continue to do\u2014in executing the America First agenda within our military and prioritizing our warfighters like never before,\u201d while Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Trump and Hegseth \u201ccommunicate constantly and are in lockstep regarding U.S. troop movements in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump has reversed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s plan to cancel deployment of 5,000 U.S. troops to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5565,451,943,5345,9,6654,6179],"class_list":["post-8444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-armored-brigade-combat-team","tag-donald-trump","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-poland","tag-president-of-poland","tag-troop-deployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}