Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) recently faced backlash from conservatives on social media after she went on a tirade against Trump administration Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, attempting to discredit his qualification to serve in his position. As Duckworth slammed Hegseth’s military leadership record, conservative critics argued she was in no position to question the secretary’s competence.
Duckworth shared a clip of her criticizing Hegseth during a Congressional speech, writing, “Pete Hegseth may talk about how having had dust on his boots makes him worthy of becoming Secretary of Defense. Well, as someone who left her boots in a dusty field in Iraq— Let me tell you exactly why he is unfit to lead our heroes.”
Political commentator Aristophanes responded to Duckworth, writing, “Your helicopter crashed because you were flying where you were briefed you shouldn’t have, over terrible terrain, going really slow. Your decisions led to what happened to you, you’re not at all in a position to judge Hegseth.”
As background, Duckworth, a former U.S. Army pilot, lost her legs after a 2004 incident in which her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a projectile fired by an Iraqi insurgent. The senator became the first double amputee of the war in Iraq before her eventual entry into United States politics.
Duckworth said in her remarks before Congress, “In these serious times, we need a serious candidate to leave our military. We need someone with merit to leave our meritocracy, someone with moral strength to be in charge of protecting our national strength. For all these reasons and quite a few more, I will not be voting to confirm the supremely unqualified Pete Hector as Secretary of Defense.”
She proceeded to argue that Hegseth was only selected for the position because he was a loyalist to Trump and didn’t possess legitimate qualifications to lead the Department of Defense. “The only thing Hegseth has ever run, he’s run into the ground, the only major organizations he’s ever led, he’s led into debt. Pete Hegseth is unqualified. He is unprepared, he is unethical, and most of all, he is unfit.”
The Illinois Democrat continued criticizing Hegseth’s leadership experiences. “During his time in uniform peak, hecse never commanded a unit with more than 200 people. Meanwhile, on the civilian side, both organizations that he led went into debt. In fact, he so badly mismanaged one of them that they had to bring in a forensic accountant to clean up the mess that he had made. That’s it. Those are his only supposed qualifications to head up one of the most complex, important organizations in the world,” she said.
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Watch Duckworth’s speech below:
Duckworth proceeded to make numerous highly critical statements about Hegseth and President Donald Trump. Slamming his knowledge of foreign policy, she said it was “not surprising from a man whose main form of policy education has come from reading the Fox News teleprompter.” Slamming his opposition to women in combat, the senator said, “This is pitiful, yet predictable from a guy who said that we women do not belong in combat, who’s dared to claim that the military is lowering its standards so that we poor, fragile, fair sex, and God forbid, us moms, can serve.”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.