Donovan on Hegseth’s Cuts of Top Military Officers: He Has Absolutely No Experience, No ‘Certifications or Qualifications’

EXCERPT:

DONOVAN: “Pete Hegseth has never been in command. He has never been to ranger school. He has never been to jump school. He doesn’t have any of the certifications or qualifications held by the people that he’s now threatening to fire. He hasn’t managed a large budget. In fact, quite the opposite when you look at the financial history of the two veterans charities that he ran. And to boot, he has a pretty significant, I’ll call it, a disciplinary history. So he doesn’t really have a lot of credibility making these claims. I’m also very unfamiliar with what Department of Defense he’s talking about. I think that it’s very easy to talk in hyperbole, and he delivers everything he does as if he were a Fox News host, not with a lot of substance and not backing things up with facts, those claims that he just made. And I would also say that, you know, the past 10 years of the Department of Defense happen to include the first Trump Administration. And a lot of these people that he’s threatening to fire, I share the secretary’s concern that he just outlined in terms of this not being the time to shed experience and shed people who could actually help this inexperienced secretary of defense through this war. A lot of those people were promoted during the first Trump Administration, when they first began to elevate through the ranks. So I have no idea whose hearts and minds he’s trying to win over by this speech, but I think that even this more junior audience that’s in front of him today is going to be able to see through this and probably just wonder, 'What is going on and when is the real leadership going to return?'"