Tuesday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed back against media and Democrat attacks on his leadership role based on allegations of unsecured communications through the Signal app.
Hegseth attributed the attacks to undermining the left-wing agenda of the previous administration.
“Mr. Secretary, do you think — you take this job, you come in with war experience and all your great background,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said. “Do you think there’s a lot of people don’t want you there and there’s some type of deep state forces that want to make sure you don’t stay there?”
“They’ve come after me from day one, just like they’ve come after President Trump,” Hegseth replied. “I’ve gotten a fraction of what President Trump got in that first term. What he has endured is superhuman. It’s not hard for me to do this job. I know exactly why I am here: to bring war fighting and the war fighting ethos back to the Pentagon, to rip out the insidious ideologies and not compromise and not back down, to bring in new press voices into the Pentagon, which we have done, to reestablish standards and accountability, to not tolerate leakers, to 100% operational control of our border [and] to get rid of trans-lunacy in the military. We haven’t backed down.”
“So here’s the thing, a lot of people come to Washington and they just play the game, and it’s you punch their ticket, and get along to go along and start doing ‘Meet the Press’ and going to the Council on Foreign Relations and spending time with all the new cocktail-sipping crowd. That’s not why I’m here,” he continued. “I’m here because President Trump asked me to bring warfighting back to the Pentagon every single day. That is our focus. And if people don’t like it, they can come after me. No worries. I’m standing right here. The warfighters are behind us. Our enemies know they’re on notice. Our allies know we’re behind them. And that, in this dangerous world for the American people, is what it’s all about.”
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