Fox News hosts ripped into a Democratic lawmaker for asking about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s drinking during a hearing that was dominated by the Signalgate scandal.
Trump CIA Director John Ratcliffe , Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, were on the hot seat for a second day on Wednesday — this time at a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee over Signalgate.
Fireworks erupted at the hearing when Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) asked whether Hegseth — whose history of drinking was a major theme at his confirmation hearing — was under the influence during the Signal chat.
On Thursday’s edition of Fox & Friends, co-hosts Lawrence Jones, Carley Shimkus, and Brian Kilmeade tore into Rep. Gomez for “trying to create a moment” and vouched for Hegseth’s lack of a drinking problem:
BRIAN KILMEADE: This guy Jimmy Gomez, who should wake up embarrassed this morning because he took his time to tar and attack Pete Hegseth on something totally unsubstantiated. Listen.
VIDEO CLIP (HOUSE HEARING CLIP)
LAWRENCE JONES: These people are crazy. I mean,creating, trying to create a moment. He looks terrible right there. There’s no evidence to suggest that–.
By the way, the secretary has been open and transparent about him turning his life around. And he doesn’t drink anymore.
As a matter of fact, I was down there reporting in Texas. He was there. And I forgot all about it and said, we’ve got to catch up over beers. And he’s like, dude, I seriously don’t drink any more.
So I just think it’s terrible. Also, this is the party that has defended Hunter Biden. a drug addict, and defended him and said, don’t attack people during their recovery, but now you want to go up to the secretary where there’s no evidence.
STEVE DOOCY: Well, you know what’s interesting about the line of questioning from that particular Democrat member of Congress is it seems like they have based their questioning of a high ranking government official on something that they’ve spotted online or on social media because there was an image of Pete Hegseth drinking out of a glass and it appeared to be like a dark liquid. It was a glass of water. It was an optical illusion. But instead of asking, what was he drinking? They did it that way.
CARLEY SHIMKUS: And also, how about the congressman saying, I’m reclaiming my time. The second the CIA director starts to answer, that’s not how it works. He needs to respond to the question. And then John Radcliffe just absolutely took the congressmen down. And you almost hate to defend the defense secretary from this line of questioning, because you don’t even want to add legitimacy to this because it’s so ridiculous.
Kilmeade went on to observe, of the Signal transcript, “There were no misspellings in that exchange! There was nothing that was bizarre! It was extremely official.”
