Secretary Hegseth

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on Hegseth, I want to say a word about Secretary Hegseth. I don't think we have ever seen someone so unserious, so childish, so obviously insecure serving as Secretary of Defense as Pete Hegseth, and that should alarm every single one of us.

Secretary Hegseth loves to look tough. He loves to boast about the lethality of our forces. He wants to be taken seriously, but yesterday he posted a ridiculous tweet of a cartoon turtle firing on alleged drug traffickers--a sick parody of a well-known children's book. This man is a national embarrassment. Tweeting memes in the middle of a potential armed conflict is something no serious leader would ever even think of doing. The only thing this tweet accomplishes is to remind the world that Pete Hegseth is not up to the job.

But, of course, this is much more serious than memes on twitter. A few days ago, the Washington Post reported that Secretary Hegseth gave a spoken directive to kill all the occupants of the first alleged drug boat struck by U.S. forces. If the reports in the Washington Post are accurate, this may expose those involved to legal consequences.

What we need right now more than anything else is the truth, the facts, which is precisely what Secretary Hegseth has refused to give.

There are tapes in the possession of the Department of Defense that would show exactly what happened during these military strikes. Secretary Hegseth has an obligation to be truthful, so he should release those tapes. He says the Washington Post account is not correct, so why not release the tapes and prove it? If he refuses to release these tapes, it calls into question the truthfulness of his account.

The tapes will show one way or the other what happened and whether Hegseth is telling the truth. If Secretary Hegseth has nothing to hide, he should not fear being truthful.

In the meantime, Republicans in the House and Senate, including the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have promised ``vigorous oversight'' on these strikes. This is very encouraging, and I thank them for working in a bipartisan way on this matter. But now Republicans in both Chambers must follow through. We need congressional hearings. We need full and transparent briefings from the Pentagon. Most importantly, the committees should continue to demand that Secretary Hegseth release--release--the tapes.

This is such a serious matter that Secretary Hegseth himself should come before the Congress to testify under oath about the nature of his order, the evidence supporting the strikes, and an explanation for what the goals are in Venezuela.

With our troops standing on a knife's edge in the Caribbean, we need a Secretary of Defense who can prove himself to be serious, sober- minded, and someone of high character. Sadly, Hegseth has the opposite of each of these qualities.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source