Following one of the longest carrier deployments in American history, the USS Abraham Lincoln is finally poised to return to its home port in San Diego. Its 322-day deployment generated an important national controversy, fueled by dramatic supply shortages, poor conditions and evidence of crew members struggling with mental health challenges.

After MS NOW’s exclusive reporting on the conditions on board the carrier, the Navy changed its plans and brought the Lincoln home months earlier than planned.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to the Lincoln and awarded the crew the Presidential Unit Citation. But at the same event, the former Fox News host also took the opportunity to whine about press coverage of the underlying scandal.

“There were a few folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol — a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission,” the Pentagon chief said. “And when I look out right here and when I talk to your leadership — and I’ve had a chance to talk to a number of you — I know it is the exact opposite.”

Hegseth went on to say that he believes journalists deliberately deride “success” and “excellence.”

Whether the secretary understands this or not, there was no secret media plot around the coverage of the Lincoln. Indeed, it was sailors and their loved ones who helped to expose the scandalous conditions on board on the carrier in the first place.

It was also the Navy’s acting secretary, Hung Cao, who acknowledged that eight sailors from the Lincoln tried to take their own lives. At the same time, he conceded to members of Congress that the carrier had confronted issues with both its plumbing and reverse osmosis desalination units.

If Hegseth looks at what transpired aboard the Lincoln and thinks the real problem is with “a few folks in the media,” his relationship with reality is badly broken.

As for the near future, MS NOW reported this week:

As the USS Abraham Lincoln pulls into its homeport of San Diego on Thursday after a record-breaking deployment to the Iran war, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is calling for investigations of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon and the supply failures and mental health challenges that plagued the aircraft carrier.

Citing MS NOW’s reporting, Gallego requested the Department of Defense’s inspector general conduct an independent review of the “reported shortages of food and basic supplies, sustained crew fatigue, and limited access to mental-health resources aboard the ship,” according to a letter dated Oct. 7 and reviewed by MS NOW.

The Arizona Democrat, a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, also asked DOD Inspector General Platte B. Moring III to examine how leadership responded to “worsening mental-health conditions or self-harm risk, including any instances in which a sailor sought care and did not receive it.”

The Pentagon has not yet responded to Gallego’s requests. Watch this space.

The post Even now, Hegseth tries to blame news organizations for USS Lincoln scandal appeared first on MS NOW.

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