Rep. Don Bacon, a prominent Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, became the first sitting GOP lawmaker Monday to suggest President Donald Trump should fire Pete Hegseth — calling the chaos at the Pentagon one reason why many Hill Republicans were privately uneasy with the Defense secretary’s nomination in the first place.
“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” Bacon, a former Air Force general who now chairs of the subcommittee on cyber issues, said in an interview. “I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern.”
The Nebraska lawmaker also said that while he didn’t feel it was his place to call on Hegseth to resign, he wouldn’t stand for Hegseth’s mismanagement were he the occupant of the Oval Office.
“If it’s true that he had another [Signal] chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it’s totally unacceptable,” said Bacon, referring to the New York Times report that Hegseth shared sensitive information about military operations in Yemen in a private chat on the Signal app that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer. It’s the second report of administration officials using an unclassified messaging platform to share sensitive information.
“I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge,” Bacon continued.
Hegseth’s decision to use a private device or Signal to communicate classified information was especially troubling, said Bacon, given vast interest among foreign adversaries to hack the phones of officials at the highest levels of government.
“Russia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all these phone calls at the very top, and the No. 1 target besides the president … would be the secretary of Defense,” said Bacon. “Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right. He’s acting like he’s above the law — and that shows an amateur person.”
Bacon’s comments come amid a larger string of high-level firings, public dramas and disagreements over the handling of sensitive and classified information within the administration, with the lawmaker casting judgment on the apparent dysfunction inside the Pentagon specifically.
His condemnation also follows harsh words from former top Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who stepped down last week and blamed Hegseth for plunging the department into chaos in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece published Sunday night.
“It looks like there’s a meltdown going on,” Bacon said. “There’s a lot — a lot — of smoke coming out of the Pentagon, and I got to believe there’s some fire there somewhere.”
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