The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee thinks US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth made a “rookie mistake” earlier this week when he undercut Ukraine’s bargaining position with Russia before peace talks have even started.
In an address to Nato in Brussels on Wednesday, Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host with no prior experience implementing defense policy, said it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to expect a return to its prewar borders or to join Nato.
Hegseth also sharply criticised America’s closest military allies and said Nato wouldn’t rescue a European nation if it’s attacked by Russia.
“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Sen. Roger Wicker (Republican, Mississippi) told Politico in an interview at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, referring to Carlson’s inexplicable infatuation with Moscow.
Wicker said he was “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments, adding, “Everybody knows ... you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to.”
Despite his misgivings, Wicker did reaffirm his support for Hegseth and applauded him for tempering his comments the next day during a bilateral meeting with the Polish defence minister.
“Hegseth is going to be a great defence secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job,” Wicker said. “He made a rookie mistake in Brussels and he’s walked back some of what he said, but not that line.”
(After Wicker’s comments gained traction Friday, Hegseth reversed his own reversal, telling reporters he “stands by the comments [he] made on that first day in the Ukraine Contact Group.”)
President Donald Trump has broadcast a particular chumminess with Putin, but Wicker called the Russian authoritarian a “war criminal who needs to be in prison for the rest of his life.”
“There are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys,” he added. “They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated.”
“Ukraine is entitled to the promises that the world made to them decades ago.”