In a rare moment of disunity among House Republicans, Politico reports GOP Rep. Bacon (R-Neb.) advised President Donald Trump to fire U.S. Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth, saying the resulting chain of chaos is why Republicans were leery of approving him in the first place.
“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, a lead Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. “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 is referring a New York Times report that Hegseth shared sensitive information about military air strikes in Yemen in a commercially-available Signal app that also included his wife, his brother and a personal lawyer. The New York Times report is the second report of Trump officials using an unclassified messaging platform to share sensitive information.
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“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” added Bacon, who also chairs the subcommittee on cyber issues. “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.”
Critics say Hegseth “lacks the credibility and experience required” to lead a massive entity as the Department of Defense,” and that his confirmation as secretary of defense “is a pick for loyalty over competence.”
Hegseth served as an Army National Guard officer from 2002 to 2021, with combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has no record of managing a body even a fraction of the DOD’s scale. His only leadership roles involve heading small nonprofit organizations Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America between 2008 to 2016. Audits revealed both organizations spent more money than they raised under his leadership. And his former Fox News colleagues said that as a part-time weekend host, he frequently showed on set hung over and smelling of alcohol.
Hegseth is also criticized for believing the U.S. need not respect the rules of the Geneva Conventions. He also supported illegal torture techniques and lobbied for impunity for service members accused of war crimes.
Bacon is more nervous about what he perceives as Hegseth’s lack of reliability in preserving military secrets.
“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.”
Read the full Politico report here.