U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) got few hard answers at a June 18 hearing on the 2026 Pentagon budget request.
Questions concerning the Pentagon’s swelling budget request — which at $205 billion is 18 percent bigger than its FY25 expenditure — took a back seat as senators got to grill U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about reserve troops stationed in California to quell protests over the administration’s immigration crackdown, among other issues.
Slotkin sought to nail down if Hegseth had given orders to shoot unarmed American demonstrators at protests last week.
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Hegseth chuckled at her question, demanding, “What is that [question] based on? What evidence do you have?”
“It is based on Donald Trump giving that order to your predecessor, [former Defense Secretary Mark Esper] who I give a lot of credit to because he didn’t accept that order,” Slotkin said. “He had more guts and balls than you because he said ‘I’m not going to send in the uniformed military to do something that I know in my gut isn’t right.’”
Slotkin then referenced Esper’s co-written book ‘A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times’ wherein Esper recounts Trump being annoyed with George Floyd protesters, turning to Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and saying, "Can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?"
“... He wrote that in his book. That’s not heresay,” Slotkin told Hegseth “So, you’re poo-pooing of this shows you don’t understand who we are as a country. … I love my military. I’ve served alongside it my whole life and I’m worried about you tainting it. Have you given the order … that they can use lethal force? Have you given the order?”
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But Hegseth chose not to answer the question. Instead, he pivoted to religion.
“Senator … be careful what you read in books, and believing it. Except for the Bible.”
“Oh, my god,” Slotkin said, flabbergasted.
Watch the segment below or at this link.