Pete Hegseth ‘blocked black and female Navy officers from promotions’

When Democrat Jack Reed asked Hegseth during an earlier Senate Armed Services Committee hearing whether President Trump had directed him to select Black and female officers for discharge, Hegseth replied, “Of course not.”

The 45-year-old said at the time: “The members of this committee and the previous leadership of this department focused on height, social engineering, race and gender in ways that we believed were unhealthy.”

However, Paul Eaton, a retired Army major general who commanded U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said the shootings are a sign that the military may not be heading in the best possible direction with Hegseth at the helm.

“I believe the senior leadership of the U.S. military has been substantially damaged,” he suggested. “You develop a rift in the cohesion of the people at that level. If you’re not purged, you wonder if you’re next, if you say the wrong thing to the man or woman to your left or right, it could incur the wrath of the Secretary of Defense or the President.”