One Republican member of Congress with an extensive military record is calling on President Donald Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
During a Tuesday interview with CNN reporter Manu Raju, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force and member of the House Armed Forces Committee, expanded on his view that the embattled defense secretary should be “held accountable” following a Washington Post report. The report alleges that Hegseth ordered the deaths of two people who survived a missile strike.
“We do not kill two survivors who are not posing an imminent threat to anybody,” Bacon said. “I just want to make sure I get the facts. If what is being reported is true, somebody was wrong and they should be held accountable. It doesn’t sound good. And if somebody actually did this, they should be held accountable,” he continued. “And it should be at the top, not the bottom.”
When asked by Raju whether Hegseth’s actions necessitated his removal, Bacon responded, “absolutely.” He also referenced his prior call for Hegseth to be fired over a separate incident known as “Signalgate,” in which the defense secretary accidentally included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg on a group text sharing classified information about impending strikes in Yemen.
“I felt that way under Signalgate. He should have taken responsibility then, and he didn’t,” Bacon said.
Hegseth’s account of his involvement in the strike has been inconsistent. Initially, during a Fox News interview, he claimed he knew “exactly” who was on the boat that was destroyed and that he watched the events unfold in real time.
However, during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting at the White House, Hegseth said he had left the room prior to the secondary strike that killed the two survivors. Instead, he stated that Admiral Frank M. Bradley, who was in charge of the mission, made the call to order the strike on the survivors. Hegseth called it “the correct decision.”
https://www.alternet.org/trump-fire-pete-hegseth/
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