President Donald Trump’s “shameful” bombings of alleged drug boats are being overseen by a “dope” Defense secretary who doesn’t fully think things through, the president’s biographer says.
Author Michael Wolff said on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that Pete Hegseth’s professional experience hardly qualifies him to lead the Pentagon. And that’s what Trump, 79, is using to his advantage.
“These guys—Hegseth and Trump—are not engaging in the extremely complex combat decisions related to, for instance, Ukraine,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “That is a difficult situation, a situation which requires some attention from these attention-deficit guys.”
“Whereas bombing… an unarmed small boat in the middle of the sea in which nothing is at stake other than the lives of some purported drug couriers, I mean, it’s just shameful,” Wolff continued.
“There is nothing from a strategic stake. There is from a political stake, and there is for these guys, and that is… to understand that what Hegseth and Trump are doing is undermining the military’s trust in them for good reasons. I mean, these guys very clearly have no f—ing idea what they are doing.”
The strikes, Wolff said, will result in others in the military having to testify before Congress.
“These guys who have worked their careers, risen through the ranks to assume command positions. You know, and they have worked hard for these jobs,” he said. “And to find yourself having gotten this job in Donald Trump’s army… I guess is ironic, but it really is tragic.”
Wolff said it would be interesting to eventually get a candid account of “the experience of being in the leadership and having to deal with” the 45-year-old former Fox News host.
An insider’s view of the “moronocracy,” as Wolff described it, would apply to working under Trump as well, given his decision-making style on intelligence matters, which reportedly does not typically involve a thorough examination of materials.
“I remember [former White House adviser Steve] Bannon would describe this with great mirth—that when the generals would come in front of Trump and begin a PowerPoint presentation, that Trump would last, tops, 90 seconds,“ Wolff recalled. ”Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do the details.”
Wolff also took issue with Hegseth’s defense of the multiple strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat on Sept. 2 as occurring in the “fog of war.”
“There is no war,” Wolff said. “This wasn’t a situation in which there are conflicting issues… there wasn’t even really an enemy. It wasn’t as if you were confronting another force that you had to deal with in split-second decisions. I mean, you’re just with a drone bombing an unarmed small craft.”
When reached for comment about Wolff’s remarks, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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