President Donald Trump has praised his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while reflecting on his record of pressing him to pardon U.S. soldiers who “killed a lot of people.”
Speaking at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Trump called Hegseth “amazing,” thanked him for doing a “great job” at the Pentagon and remembered the secretary’s former life as a Fox News presenter.
“You know, he used to do interviews and all he wanted to talk about is war,” the president said.
“‘Sir, will you give a pardon to 19 soldiers?’” Trump said, relaying a past conversation between the two men. “‘Why?’ ‘Well, they killed a lot of people. They were trained to kill and that’s what they did.’
“And I pardoned a lot of people and they’ve all been well behaved, right? OK good, otherwise it would be a big story! ‘Trump shouldn’t have let them go.’ But I’m blaming you Pete, OK?”
The president’s remarks were met with laughter in the room and he continued to say of Hegseth: “He was very successful on television, actually.
“I think he probably hated it because he can’t love anything more than what he’s doing right now and he’s doing it incredibly well so great job Pete. Appreciate it.”
Oddly, Trump also said he admired the “beautiful smile” of Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll.
The president appeared to be referring, at least in part, to events in his first term when Hegseth, still at Fox, lobbied him to pardon three soldiers: Navy SEAL platoon leader Edward Gallagher, Major Mathew Golsteyn and Army 1st Lieutenant Clint Lorance.
Gallagher was charged in September 2018 with offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice after he was accused of fatally stabbing an injured ISIS prisoner, aged 17, and photographing himself with the boy’s corpse, an image he then forwarded on to friends.
He was acquitted of murder after another man took responsibility for the killing but convicted of “wrongfully posing for an unofficial picture with a human casualty.”
Trump announced on November 4, 2019 that Gallagher’s subsequent demotion had been reversed and insisted he be allowed to retain his Trident Pin, breaking with convention.
Golsteyn and Lorance were charged with the murder of Afghan civilians during the “War on Terror” in separate incidents and both were pardoned by Trump on November 15, 2019.
Since taking over the Department of Defense, Hegseth has sought to root out “woke” ideology and DEI from the U.S. military and instill a “warfighting” mentality in their place, complaining about troops being unfit and insufficiently tidy in their personal grooming.
He reached a newfound international audience during the Iran war when he gave combative daily press briefings on the progress of Operation Epic Fury, frequently taking journalists to task for asking questions he considered hostile or “unpatriotic.”
