“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough slammed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth‘s leadership Thursday morning amid mistreatment reports regarding a carrier’s worth of long-deployed U.S. sailors, calling it “insane by any measure.”
The Military Times reported this week about the conditions the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are being subjected to on the vessel, which has been deployed for over eight months while supporting U.S. military operations against Iran in the Middle East. The carrier’s deployment began on Nov. 21, 2025, and its mission has been extended with no public return date yet announced.
Sailors’ loved ones have repeatedly expressed concerns about their family members’ long work days, food shortages, contaminated water supplies, moldy showers and declining reserves of toothpaste, deodorant, soap and basic hygiene supplies. Those concerns pile on top of worries about the mental health of those who remain aboard the vessel, following reports of multiple sailors attempting or going through with jumping overboard.
“This is what happens when you have a defense secretary that’s obsessed [with] the color of people’s skin, whether somebody is a man or a woman, testosterone levels, this obsession over DEI. That’s all we ever hear about,” Scarborough said in response to the reports. “What we’re not hearing about is, well, the basics.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with toughness or this or that or the other,” he added. “There are normal rotations. This is insane by any measure at all.”
Scarborough continued to slam the Department of Defense for its treatment of the sailors in question, as well as the ongoing munition concerns that have begun to plague the United States’ side of the Iran War.
“We have our sailors being treated like third-class citizens, treated like trash, actually. We’re not taking care of job one, which is, again, military readiness,” Scarborough recapped. “We’re not even able to keep count of the munitions that we have. Pete Hegseth’s DOD has run out of munitions to fight a hot war with Iran that Pete Hegseth told the president we should start.”
“He’s sitting around talking about testosterone levels and doing all these stupid promo videos that are supposed to make him look tough,” the “Morning Joe” host added of the defense secretary. “He wants to worry about social issues and social policies inside the Pentagon instead of making sure we have the munitions we need and making sure that our military men and women are ready for warfare and they get sane, rational rotations.”
Scarborough later questioned Hegseth’s continued presence within the Trump administration after MS NOW co-host Jonathan Lemire said the defense secretary remains in good standing with the president.
“Why? I mean, this is a guy that’s caused problems time and time again,” Scarborough remarked. “Any other Secretary of Defense would have been fired by now, and I’m not sure why he’s still there.”
