Chris Coons Grilled Over Hypocrisy In Calling For Resignations Of Trump Officials
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) was grilled during an interview on Friday for calling on Trump defense officials to resign over their use of a Signal chat group given that he never called for Biden defense officials to resign when they had major screwups.
Coons made the remarks on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when pressed by co-host Joe Kernen over his calls for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to resign while he remained silent during the Biden years with regard to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
“Did you call for Lloyd Austin’s resignation?” Kernen asked. “Not only did we lose 13 service members, we left $70 billion worth of equipment that fell into the hands of the Taliban. Couple of years later, he was out of pocket for two weeks and didn’t tell the White House.”
“Did you ask for him to resign at this point?” he pressed. “Are you actually asking for Hegseth and Waltz to resign when you didn’t ask for Lloyd Austin?”
Coons claimed that Austin not do anything that put United States national security at risk by getting health care treatment despite not notifying anyone about his hospitalization and surgery for cancer.
“What about Afghanistan? What about Afghanistan?” Kernen pressed. “Did you guys forget that? Is the statute of limitations is over for 4 years?”
Coons ignored the question and instead continued to talk about Austin’s surgery for cancer.
Kernen continued to press Coons about Afghanistan, noting that in the past, he had referred to Biden’s disastrous withdraw as a success.
“Afghanistan was not a success,” Kernen said.
Coons continued to deflect by starting to talk about the Houthis.
“I am not saying that the attack on the Houthis was not a success,” Coons said. “I am saying that he demonstrably violated a directive that was just shared in the Pentagon about don’t use Signal for classified information, it is not reliably secure. And one of the folks on that group chat was in Russia at the time that that information being — look, all of us use apps like WhatsApp and Signal.”
Kernen called out Coons for deflecting: “You’re running out the clock on Afghanistan.”
Coons then proceeded to blame President Donald Trump for Biden’s disaster, even though he admitted that actions that were taken under Biden’s leadership were “badly handled.”
When asked if he should have called for Austin to resign over the debacle, Coons responded: “I don’t know whether Lloyd Austin is the person who should have been held accountable for it, but there should have been accountability.”
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