MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough blasted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he ousted the Army’s top officer, warning that his repeated shakeups are “weakening” the U.S. military.

On Thursday, the Pentagon confirmed Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George would step down from his post, effective immediately, and, according to a Department of Defense official who spoke to MS NOW, that was not by choice. Hegseth directly asked George to retire. 

George is now one of the more than a dozen senior military leaders to have left their posts under Hegseth’s leadership. 

On Friday’s “Morning Joe,” Scarborough warned that “political purges” of the military “always end badly.”

“Of course, the grand historical example is Stalin purging his ranks of generals leading up to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union,” which the MS NOW host said left the dictator “completely flat-footed.”

Scarborough said it was especially concerning for the defense secretary to be carrying out these purges while the country is actively at war with Iran.

“When people see Pete Hegseth randomly firing generals and admirals and top ranked officers with a cumulative hundreds of years of experience, our enemies across the world — especially in Tehran right now — have to be delighted that he is so caught up on stupid, small, granular, made-up political issues that he is weakening the United States military and its command leadership,” he explained. 

George’s dismissal comes a week after The New York Times reported he blocked the promotion of several Army officers, including two Black men and two female soldiers. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, defended the process as “apolitical and unbiased,” according to the Times.

Scarborough on Friday called Hegseth’s behavior “embarrassing.”

“I wish we had a secretary of defense that was focused more on qualifications than the color of somebody’s skin or their gender,” Scarborough said. “We want qualified people in our ranks, and he is too obsessed with gender, with race, with diversity issues and committing a war there, when we have a very hot war going on in Iran right now.”

You can watch Scarborough’s full commentary in the clip at the top of the page.

The post Joe Scarborough: America’s enemies ‘delighted’ over Hegseth’s political purges at Pentagon appeared first on MS NOW.

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