Colby Hall Nukes ‘Total Buffoon’ Pete Hegseth on CNN: ‘How Is He Still In This Role?!’

Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall called out Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on CNN as a “total buffoon” and “unmitigated disaster,” but argued he’s doing exactly the job President Donald Trump wants him to do.

Hall joined the table on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip on Thursday evening as Hegseth continued facing criticisms over foreign boat strikes and his qualifications to lead the Defense Department.

Lawmakers were briefed this week by Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley about a September 2 strike against an alleged drug smuggling boat off the Trinidad coast. According to a Washington Post report, citing people familiar with the situation, Hegseth gave an order to kill everyone on the boat. Later, Bradley ordered a second strike on the boat while there were two remaining survivors.

Bradley denied there was a “kill them all” order in closed door meetings, but the report has brought up bipartisan questions about the legality of the administration’s foreign boat strikes.

Phillip noted on Thursday that Hall has argued Hegseth is in his role “because he’s willing to go out there and say both at the same time that he’s going to get all the bad guys, but he didn’t have time to stick around for the second part of this strike.”

Hall wrote in a Mediaite op-ed that “buffoonery” and “chaos” are simply part of the job for Hegseth.

“President Donald Trump isn’t troubled by Hegseth’s ineptitude; he’s energized by the spectacle of it. He values ratings over standards, controversy over competence. The chaos isn’t a cost of doing business. It’s the business. And that tells you everything about what this Pentagon has become,” he wrote.

On CNN, Hall pointed not just to the “double tap” strike, but also to the Pentagon Inspector General’s report into Hegseth’s use of the messaging app Signal. In one chat, Hegseth accidentally included a journalist in a group chat discussing plans to bomb Yemen. The report found that Hegseth’s Signal use risked “potential compromise of sensitive DOD information, which could cause harm to DOD personnel and mission objectives.”

Hall called out Hegseth as an “unmitigated disaster” — in any administration except Trump’s.

He argued:

Hegseth has been an unmitigated disaster and it shouldn’t shock anyone. He was the weekend host of Fox & Friends. He is not equipped to manage the Pentagon, let alone whatever sort of veterans group that he had when he was also on TV. It’s not just this double tap situation. The Inspector General report came out and said that he shared sort of sensitive material that put military officers at risk. And, you know, it makes everything that he said before a flat out lie. He’s suggested a court martial. He’s told Mark Kelly and, you know, he’s a buffoon. He’s a total buffoon. And it begs the question, how is he still in this role? And I’ll tell you the answer is because, as Jeff Goldberg said on this network earlier, there is a culture of impunity in this administration. It’s from Trump. It’s from a Republican-led Congress who just will give a pass. And any other administration, this guy would be out in a heartbeat.

Watch above via CNN.

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