CNN’s Sara Sidner battled through a barrage of claims made by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) to support embattled defense secretary Pete Hegseth.The defense secretary’s leadership and judgment have been called into question over his use of a non-secure app to discuss military operations, and his top officials have reportedly been beset by infighting and chaos, but Donalds told “CNN News Central” that the former Fox News host simply needed time to acclimate himself to the job.”Pete has been on the job, what, six weeks now, just about?” Donalds said. “They’re going through the Department of Defense, obviously trying to find inefficiencies, making sure there are not legacy staffers and political appointees at DOD who, to be frank with, you, are opposed to the agenda of president Trump. This happens all the time when you have transitions in government, you have holdovers from previous administrations who do not share the vision that the president has, and so Pete Hegseth is trying to reorganize DOD and get it up to snuff, because let’s not sit here and act like DOD was doing a bang-up job under the previous administration.”Donalds then deflected from a new report alleging that a defense memo went unsigned for three weeks because the White House was unable to reach Hegseth or his chief of staff, and the lawmaker claimed “nobody was saying a word” when Joe Biden’s defense secretary Lloyd Austin waited several days to alert the president he had been hospitalized.”This is not even this is not even the same type of story,” Sidner said, as Donalds attempted to talk over her. “This is not even fair to say [that] nobody is saying a word [about Austin]. So you think that the defense secretary, the former defense secretary under Biden, going to the hospital for treatment, not telling the president, admitting that he did not tell the president, although there was someone that was heading at the time, is an equal thing to somebody who is giving out information to his wife who does not have a security clearance, to his lawyer, to his brother on a personal cell phone, in on a Signal chat, which he’s already been, you know, looked at for, for doing that with a whole bunch of folks from the administration. You’re equating those two things?”Donalds insisted he was not equating the two situations, and Sidner interjected.ALSO READ: ‘Dictatorship, not a town hall’: Families ‘distraught’ as MTG disruptors tased and jailed”You just did!” she said.Donalds pressed on, saying that Austin had “disappeared” and “nobody knew where he was,” and insisted that Hegseth was doing a good job despite the “allegations” made against him.”Some of these are not allegations,” Sidner said.”Some of these are coming from his own former press secretary, some of these are coming because we saw the chats already with his, you know, with the leadership on Signal. So we saw that he uses Signal and inappropriately uses it, so I guess the question to you is you sound like you’re putting these two things together, that you see them as the same. But I want to understand if you are okay with him using Signal to talk about war plans to talk about the attack as it’s happening both with his circle and a reporter who was added on to that chat, mind you, and with his own family members. Are you okay with that?”Donalds attempted to turn the page on what he called “Signalgate number one,” which he said had involved White House officials, but Sidner pointed out that The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg had also been added to the chat, but the lawmaker brushed that aside as irrelevant.”Look, let’s be clear: Pete Hegseth has done his job as as secretary of defense right now,” Donalds said, repeating himself from earlier in the segment. “Recruitment is up. We were hemorrhaging soldiers at the Department of Defense under the previous administration. That is a fact, nobody can debate that.”In fact, military records show a boost in recruiting began under Biden due in large part to programs started by his administration, according to a Washington Post fact check.”So if you want to focus on Signalgate 2.0, that’s fine,” Donalds said. “What we are focused on is making sure that the military and the Department of Defense has the troops that it needs, has the focus that it needs to take on the challenges facing the United States of America, and that if the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has to call on our military to come to action, like they actually had to do during this situation with the Houthis, that the Department of Defense is prepared to respond, respond quickly and to be effective, and that is clear of what’s already occurred under the leadership of Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense.”Watch below or click the link here.
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