Pete Hegseth should resign over Signal group chat leak, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton says
In the days since the editor of The Atlantic disclosed that he had been accidentally included by top Trump administration officials in a discussion over a non-secure messaging app of sensitive information about a pending military action, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a decorated Marine veteran, has been hearing from a lot of his military contacts.
"They're disgusted," Moulton told WBZ-TV's political analyst Jon Keller. "And the ones who are still on active duty, I think, are honestly wondering, how are they expected to lead their troops? How are they expected to make sure that their Marines or soldiers or airmen or sailors actually follow the rules to keep our nation safe when the top guy in the Department of Defense refuses to do so and has zero accountability for his own behavior?"
Seth Moulton calls on Pete Hegseth to resign
That would be Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who Moulton said now has "three options here: the honorable thing to do, the right thing to do, is to resign, because you've lost all moral authority to tell people in your command to follow orders, basic orders, that you're unwilling to follow yourself. "
"But the second option would be to say, 'Yes, I really screwed up here…and we're all going to make sure that no one ever makes this mistake again.' He's chosen the third option, which is just to lie, lie to the American people, lie to the troops he leads. Just be completely dishonest about what happened," Moulton added.
Trump administration's budget cuts
Moulton also said he is furious about recent budget cuts to domestic programs made by the Trump administration under the direction of Elon Musk.
"We're going to start seeing veterans dying on waiting lists again because Musk doesn't care about vets. Trump doesn't care about vets. They're just slashing the VA [Veterans Administration]. But for all those domestic problems, I've always said that the greatest threats of a second Trump administration are the foreign policy ones, because those are the ones that could literally start a war. Those are the ones that could be existential for America," Moulton said. "Trump is weak on China. That invites an invasion of Taiwan that could literally lead to a massive war in the Pacific, a World War III. He's weak on Russia, which is inviting Putin to not only run over all of Ukraine, but to go to some European countries, perhaps NATO countries next. He's weak on terrorists. He's just weak across the board, and that's very dangerous, because it's inviting our enemies to take advantage of us."
Moulton: Dems "lost touch" with Americans
Moulton says he's been trying to persuade some of his Republican colleagues who he knows to be upset about the app chat scandal to speak out publicly against Hegseth, but has failed so far because "they're just scared" of losing their jobs to a Trump-backed primary opponent next year.
But he says the Democrats were unable to take advantage of the GOP's weaknesses last fall because "we've lost touch with a lot of Americans," said Moulton. "The majority of Americans don't trust us across the country."
How can that breach be repaired? Start with immigration, says Moulton.
"For years, we just denied that there was a problem. We said, 'Oh, it's not a big deal at the southern border.' Well, it is a big deal. It is a problem. I mean, Trump was right to identify it as a problem. Now his solutions are horrific, unconstitutional, lawless," Moulton said. "I mean, what he's doing down the street [with a Tufts student taken into custody by masked ICE agents whose crime appears to consist of writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed article] reminds me of the Gestapo…. Part of the reason he's been able to get away with this is because Democrats didn't have an alternative plan. We didn't stand up with a plan to solve immigration ourselves."
Moulton also discussed the work of his Serve America PAC, which recruits and raises funds for political candidates who have served in the military. You can watch the entire interview above.
Join WBZ-TV every Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. for another interview on politics and public policy on the weekend edition of Keller At Large.
