Lawrence O’Donnell called out Pete Hegseth over the Secretary of War’s new claim that the “fog of war” is to blame for those who were killed after he allegedly ordered a second strike on a boat in the Carribbean.
“The most incompetent and unqualified secretary of defense in history, the only one who had to pledge to stop drinking in order to win Senate confirmation, keeps changing his story … and we don’t know if he stopped drinking,” O’Donnell began on his Tuesday during his segment of “The Last Word” on MS NOW.
Watch the clip below.
“When publicly suspected of murder, changing your story is cause for increasing suspicion of guilt,” “O’Donnell continued. “And when your changed story is worse than your first false account, then your story cannot survive a real investigation. And now, Pete Hegseth’s story hinges on a new lie: the fog of war. But you cannot have a fog of war without war — and Pete Hegseth has no war.”
O’Donnell’s remarks come after Hegseth claimed on Tuesday that he had no clue there were any survivors on the boat after already stating that he never called for the survivors to be killed.
O’Donnell continued: “Pete Hegseth has gone from saying he could see very clearly what was happening when he authorized the killing of 11 people in a small boat running on outboard motors that posed no threat to the United States of America in any way … He’s now claiming that he couldn’t see what was going on on that boat because of the fog of war.”
As politicians like Sen. Rand Paul weigh whether Hegseth is “lying” or is “incompetent and didn’t know what happened,” O’Donnell lays it out straight from his perspective.
“Sen. Paul knows that he doesn’t have to choose between lying and incompetent. Pete Hegseth has proved he’s capable of both,” O’Donnell said.
Hegseth made his remarks during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday. There were two survivors who were clinging to the boat following the first alleged strike.
“I did not personally see survivors,” Hegseth said, per the New York Times. “The thing was on fire. It exploded, there’s fire, there’s smoke.”
He added: “This is called the fog of war.”
Hegseth is now the subject of a congressional investigation regarding the alleged orders, which he reportedly celebrated in social media posts, but previously denied.
