Lt. Gen.Mark Hertling Says Dismissing Navy Morale Issues as ‘Fake News’ Erodes Troop Trust

EXCERPT:

HERTLING: “The stories about what was happening on the Lincoln started coming out in early April and they festered. There's been multiple reports about morale issues. You know, in that kind of an environment, the leadership says, hey, look, we seem to have a problem. And what they normally do is say, I'm going to do an anonymous command climate survey. I'm going to get information from the sailors. I'm going to address their concerns. And I'm usually going to talk to the families back home with some type of messaging. That's the way it's normally done. How do I know this? Because we did it in 2004 in Iraq. We were basically told our 12 month deployment as we were sending soldiers back home. And a third of our 20,000 person force had already left to go back to Germany. We were told we were going to be extended for three months. The first thing we did was talk to the leadership. The leadership talked to the soldiers. The commanding general turned to me. I was the assistant division commander. And he said, I'm flying you back to Germany and you're going to make the rounds of all the bases in Europe where our spouses and our family members are. And you're going to talk to them and let them vent on you. And that was on day one. These are all the kind of things that the current administration, the secretary of defense has not done. And in fact, they've done just the opposite when they claim fake news and everything's fine and we're giving them all they want, which is exactly what Secretary Hegseth has done over the last two weeks. And it took the acting secretary of the Navy last week to go to San Diego and talk to the families. It's too late.”