Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss Sec. Pete Hegseth following the second Signal chat scandal.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is Congressman Seth
00:04Moulton. Congressman, thank you so much for joining me. It's good to be back. Thanks for
00:08having me. News of a second signal scandal broke over the weekend. Last month, in a chat that
00:15included his wife, his brother, and lawyer, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly shared
00:21details about an upcoming attack on the Houthis in Yemen. To start off this conversation,
00:25what's your reaction to this new signal story? Well, first of all, I'm not surprised. As someone
00:32who can't be trusted once, can't be trusted a lot. And just in the same way that this guy can't be
00:37trusted in all aspects of his personal life, he's professionally totally untrustworthy,
00:43completely unqualified to do this job. And he himself has become a danger to the national
00:50security of the United States. This is very serious. I want to talk about the differences
00:55here between the first signal gate and this story because National Security Advisor Michael
01:01Waltz last time inadvertently added the Atlantic's editor to the chat. This was a completely different
01:07chat. It reportedly was made before Pete Hegseth was confirmed. It included his family members as
01:13well as his lawyers. What are your thoughts on the difference here? I mean, it seems a lot worse,
01:19but the bottom line is that both are completely illegal. By the Department of Defense's own
01:25classification guidance, the details Secretary Hegseth shared are classified. And actually,
01:31they're classified top secret. Now, it's illegal even to share what's called sensitive but unclassified
01:38information on a signal chat. It's an unsecure platform, and it often exists on personal phones
01:45that can be hacked by our adversaries. In fact, some of their top targets are people like Pete Hegseth
01:50and his associates. So this is dangerous. It's illegal, no matter who you're talking to. And it's
01:59especially dangerous because the top secret information he shared could be used by our adversaries to shoot
02:06down our own pilots. Pete Hegseth tried to tamp down concerns today at the White House's Easter egg
02:13roll. He said to reporters essentially that this was an old story. He blamed the media. He said that
02:19the media is taking, quote, anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to
02:24slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me because we're changing the
02:29Defense Department. He didn't deny what happened, though. What's your thoughts on how he characterized it?
02:35You learn in the military. I remember this from day one of Marine training is that integrity matters
02:41above all else. So you might drop out of a run and they'll let you try again. You might fail a test
02:46and you can take it again. But if you lie about anything in the Marine Corps, you're going home
02:50that afternoon. Well, Segseth continues to lie about this. He's not taking accountability for his own
02:58actions. And as a result, he cannot be trusted. He's clearly not trusted by his own closest
03:05advisors. What do you think the troops think about it? Well, I know because I've heard from a lot of
03:09them that they are disgusted by this behavior from the top person in the Pentagon because they know
03:15that they would be fired in a heartbeat, probably prosecuted criminally, if they did what the
03:23Secretary of Defense has done and is now lying about himself.