An angry and defensive Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is facing blowback after trashing his predecessor former Defense Chief Lloyd Austin.
It happened during a Congressional hearing where the former Fox News host asked for more money to fund President Donald Trump’s unapproved war on Iran.
In a heated confrontation with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin during the hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday, July 21, Hegseth made astonishing remarks about Austin while asking the committee for another $88 billion for his and Trump’s military campaign against Tehran.
Hegseth tried to hide how much he was actually requesting, though, by telling the committee a majority of the needed money was for the Department of Defense, not the war.
Durbin asked him how much the war has cost so far, and that’s when Hegseth began stuttering and attempting to blame the Biden administration.
He also lowballed the costs. “Senator, the estimate we have as of today is $37.5 billion,” Hegseth claimed.
But according to The New Republic, independent experts and U.S. intelligence officials have put the cost at more than $100 billion, more than $62 billion short of what Hegseth claimed.
He then yelled over Durbin gaslighting lawmakers and insisting the U.S. military had to be rebuilt after four years of neglect by the Biden administration.
Hegseth admitted the DoD still had $75 billion left over from the staggering increase in funding for defense under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Republicans rammed through Congress last summer.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill gave us a chance to get caught back up,” he claimed.
The $75 billion is not part of Trump and Hegseth’s war chest, instead the defense chief claimed, “This is rebuilding our military from what was not funded in the past under the Biden administration.”
Hegseth says the funds are helping move the department away from “woke” priorities under Biden.
He then launched into a scathing attack on Austin, the nation’s first Black Secretary of Defense.
“I don’t know what Lloyd Austin did for four years. I really don’t,” Hegseth whined, deflecting from the question at hand.
“The amount of neglect, the amount of stale thinking and bureaucracy, it was staggering when we took over,” the angry former TV personality shouted while Durbin was still trying to pin him down on the cost of the Iran war.
Hegseth’s astounding comments about Austin are filled with irony. He’s a former U.S. Army National Guard infantry officer who enlisted with the ROTC in 2003 and retired as a major 2021.
In comparison, Austin is a decorated 40-year veteran with a distinguished military career.
He graduated from West Point Military Academy and rose through the ranks to become a four-star general and the 12th commander of U.S. Central Command or CENTCOM where he led military operations across the Middle East and Central and South Asia.
His achievements are unassailable including rebuilding relationships with allies as defense chief after what critics call Trump’s disastrous first term, modernizing the military, and undertaking historic reforms in the military justice system to address sexual assaults, to name just a few.
The backlash against Hegseth was fast and furious on the Pentagon’s own Facebook page. Nearly three thousand comments reminded Hegseth and his team that he’s a universe away from Austin.
“Check his coffee cup it’s not coffee or water,” poster Matt Pomeroy joked, alluding to reporting about Hegseth’s alcohol consumption.
This commenter quipped, “One thing I’m sure he wasn’t doing was his makeup.”
Others fumed, “Show some respect for a good and decent man of values and service, Secretary and former General Austin who served for decades and earned the respect of the Dept. A man who also showed respect and care for ALL Service Members.”
Several others expressed frustration with Trump and his cronies constant blaming of the Biden administration more than a year and a half into Trump’s second term.
“A great leader doesn’t need to dwell on the past. It sounds like excuses” and “It’s always someone else’s fault.”
But this post may have summed it up the best, “The boy is unfit.”
