Senator JD Vance (R-OH) joined Fox Business’ Kudlow to demand the firing of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Watch the interview here and read excerpts below.
Senator Vance: “I can’t imagine another time in the history of our government run by Democrats or Republicans where you have a major cabinet official who’s just gone missing. We have to remember that Joe Biden ran on restoring basic decency and order to the White House. That was his entire claim to be elected President in the first place. They promised good government, what they’ve delivered is a missing secretary. How do you lose the Secretary of Defense for three days without anybody asking serious questions, Larry? It just doesn’t make an ounce of sense. There are so many unanswered questions here, so many things that we don’t know, and it just gives lie to the entire Biden promise that he would return decency to good government. I’d take the decency that we had five years ago in the White House over losing the Secretary of Defense…
“Look, he absolutely should resign. He should be fired by the President of the United States, and barring that, the Congress has to look into this. There are so many problems here, so many unanswered questions. Did we have a breakdown in our nuclear deterrence? Of course, the Secretary of Defense is a major part of that. We’re now four days where we haven’t seen the Secretary of Defense.
“We should actually check in and make sure, God forbid, we don’t have a Weekend at Bernie’s situation with the world’s most powerful military. He should resign. This is disgraceful. Again, I’ve never seen anything like it, but beyond him resigning, Larry, we’ve got to have a very, very stark set of questions to the Biden administration about who’s actually in charge over there.
“If you lose the Secretary of Defense for days, it suggests that the engine is running, but nobody’s behind the wheel. That is the story of the Biden administration at a time of extraordinary chaos for the United States all across the world. It’s a big, big problem…
“We have to remember, it’s not just indirect conflicts. We have American troops that are being fired on all across the world. We are responding, of course, with the situation with the Houthi rebels and Iran. And my question is, who is the President of the United States talking to at the world’s most powerful military? Is it the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Is it somebody else at the Department of Defense? And why is Lloyd Austin not involved in these conversations, or, at the very least, telling people where he is? It’s important for the American people to recognize that whatever your politics, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, this is arguably the most important official in our government outside the President of the United States.
“It’s a really troubling thing that we just lost him and that no one in the United States government actually thinks it was important for the President to talk to the leader of the armed forces. It’s a really, really worrisome situation and it suggests breakdowns at multiple levels of the military and of the Biden White House.”
