Sec. Pete Hegseth Speaks With Reporters Amid Leaked Signal Chat Scandal, Ignores Reporter Questions

2 days ago

Sec. Pete Hegseth spoke with reporters on Wednesday in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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Transcript

00:00What a beautiful day. It's always a beautiful day when we're on the road talking to the

00:05troops and actually, in real time, reestablishing deterrence. You see, that's what President

00:12Trump has charged the Defense Department with doing. Reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding

00:17the military, which we're doing in real time, and reestablishing deterrence. And that's

00:22why we're heading out into the Indo-Pacific to talk to our allies and partners and meet

00:26with the troops. Anybody that knows me for years and knows President Trump knows how

00:32much we love the warriors. That's what it's about. The men and women who serve, who do

00:36the tough, difficult, gritty, dirty work that most Americans will never know about. We have

00:42the privilege of seeing and understanding the courage and skill of what they do. I'm

00:47going to go see that for the next couple of days. We also have seen it on full display

00:52in what's been done to the Houthi terrorists and what they're trying to do to close freedom

00:56of navigation. You see, under the Biden administration, we let our troops and our ships and both warships

01:03and commercial ships get shot at to no consequence. What does that look like? That looks like

01:08weakness. And what President Trump has said is, peace through strength is back. We will

01:15reestablish deterrence. That's not acceptable. And our ongoing campaign against the Houthis

01:22has been devastatingly effective. Now, as I said to this group a couple of times on

01:26this trip now, as we move to the Indo-Pacific to do our job, which is what we're here to

01:31do, nobody's texting war plans. I noticed this morning out came something that doesn't

01:39look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans

01:45because they know it's not war plans. There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight

01:53paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information. You know who sees war plans?

02:00I see them every single day. I looked at them this morning. I looked at attack plans this

02:06morning. You know who does attack plans and war plans? Men like that Admiral right there,

02:11Caparo for the Indo-Pacific or Eric Carrillo, our general in CENTCOM. They do attack plans

02:18and war plans. And thank God we have those leaders who do it and do it well. And our

02:24enemies know it. My job, as it said atop of that, everybody's seen it now, team update

02:31is to provide updates in real time, general updates in real time, keep everybody informed.

02:38That's what I did. That's my job. The warfighters will take the fight to the enemy. And I love

02:44what they do. And with President Trump's leadership, our enemies are on notice. We will have peace

02:49through strength and we'll keep putting our troops first. Thank you very much. We're heading

02:53off to the red.

Sec. Pete Hegseth Speaks With Reporters Amid Leaked Signal Chat Scandal, Ignores Reporter Questions

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