Reacting to a Wall Street Journal report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been dragging his third wife along with him to intel briefings, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) took a personal jab at the Donald Trump nominee.
On Friday, the Journal reported that the embattled Hegseth, already being scrutinized for sharing military plans in a Signal chatroom before an attack in Yemen on Houthi rebels, has been inviting his wife Jennifer to tag along to some of his meetings.
The report noted, "One of the meetings, a high-level discussion at the Pentagon on March 6 between Hegseth and U.K. Secretary of Defense John Healey, took place at a sensitive moment for the trans-Atlantic alliance, one day after the U.S. said it had cut off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine."
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Asked about the propriety of the Pentagon chief allowing his wife, a former Fox News producer, to hang out in the meeting, Coons made a reference to Hegseth's well-documented history of drinking to excess and beyond.
On MSNBC's "The Weekend," Coons told the hosts, "That's not normal at all. Look, I've traveled overseas on congressional delegation trips with Republicans and Democrats. On some of those trips, our spouses come along with us [but] they are not allowed in any secret, sensitive, classified meeting with foreign heads of state, with foreign officials."
"Those meetings are usually conducted separately from any sort of a spouse program," he observed before smiling and adding, "Just because you're married to someone doesn't mean that if Secretary Hegseth has one of the highest levels of classification access, he can't just hand that to his wife and say, 'Here, honey, hold my beer and hold my classified information.'"
"You just –– it doesn't work that way," he told the laughing hosts.
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