Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth unloaded on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Pentagon’s budget on Wednesday.
“You are blowing through money like my fellow cadets and I did in our first liberty after basic camp. Luckily, I didn’t end up with a questionable tattoo,” Duckworth began, perhaps referencing the tattoo on Hegseth’s chest that led a fellow service member to flag him as a possible “Insider Threat.”
The Illinois senator, who lost both legs serving in Iraq, pulled no punches, calling Hegseth’s “failures” during his first scandalous months as defense secretary “staggering.” Duckworth suggested that Hegseth’s worst offense in office was pulling resources away from core missions to fulfill President Donald Trump’s desire to turn California into a war zone.
“I don’t know if this is because you are too inexperienced and incompetent to understand the real threats facing our country, or if it’s because you are just an unqualified ‘yes man’ who can’t tell the president how to keep Americans safe,” Duckworth added.
Hot damn!
Hegseth, like most Trump appointees, is no match when it comes to senators armed with facts.
Hegseth’s scandal-ridden tenure as defense secretary, highlighted by an outrageous security breach on the third-party messaging app Signal, has been on shaky ground for some time. This week, reports surfaced that Trump, unhappy with his sad-horn-sounding military birthday parade, was looking for someone to blame, and Hegseth was a likely candidate.
It might be time to start playing “Taps.”