{"id":8435,"date":"2025-04-21T17:31:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T17:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/an-amateur-person-gop-rep-bacon-says-hegseth-should-go\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T17:31:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T17:31:55","slug":"an-amateur-person-gop-rep-bacon-says-hegseth-should-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/an-amateur-person-gop-rep-bacon-says-hegseth-should-go\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018An amateur person\u2019: GOP Rep. Bacon says Hegseth should go"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Rep. Don Bacon, a prominent Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, became the first sitting GOP lawmaker Monday to suggest President Donald Trump should fire Pete Hegseth \u2014 calling the chaos at the Pentagon one reason why many Hill Republicans were privately uneasy with the Defense secretary\u2019s nomination in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn\u2019t have a lot of experience,\u201d Bacon, a former Air Force general who now chairs of the subcommittee on cyber issues, said in an interview. \u201cI like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That\u2019s a concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nebraska lawmaker also said that while he didn\u2019t feel it was his place to call on Hegseth to resign, he wouldn\u2019t stand for Hegseth\u2019s mismanagement were he the occupant of the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s true that he had another [Signal] chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it\u2019s totally unacceptable,\u201d said Bacon, referring to the New York Times report that Hegseth shared sensitive information about military operations<\/a> in Yemen in a private chat on the Signal app that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer. It\u2019s the second report of administration officials using an unclassified messaging platform to share sensitive information.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not in the White House, and I\u2019m not going to tell the White House how to manage this \u2026 but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn\u2019t tolerate it if I was in charge,” Bacon continued.<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s decision to use a private device or Signal to communicate classified information was especially troubling, said Bacon, given vast interest among foreign adversaries to hack the phones of officials at the highest levels of government.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all these phone calls at the very top, and the No. 1 target besides the president \u2026 would be the secretary of Defense,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cRussia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right. He\u2019s acting like he\u2019s above the law \u2014 and that shows an amateur person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bacon\u2019s comments come amid a larger string of high-level firings, public dramas and disagreements over the handling of sensitive and classified information within the administration, with the lawmaker casting judgment on the apparent dysfunction inside the Pentagon specifically.<\/p>\n

His condemnation also follows harsh words from former top Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who stepped down last week and blamed Hegseth for plunging the department into chaos in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece<\/a> published Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like there\u2019s a meltdown going on,\u201d Bacon said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot \u2014 a lot \u2014 of smoke come out of the Pentagon, and I got to believe there\u2019s some fire there somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Don Bacon, a prominent Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, became the first sitting GOP lawmaker Monday to suggest President Donald Trump should fire Pete Hegseth \u2014 calling the chaos at the Pentagon one reason why many Hill Republicans were privately uneasy with the Defense secretary\u2019s nomination in the first place. \u201cI had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}