Secretary of Defense and former co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, Pete Hegseth lashed out at a reporter at his fiery press conference on Thursday when asked about crediting a female B-2 bomber pilot.
The operation to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites last Saturday, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, included seven B-2 Spirit bombers that flew east from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Iran. Another group of B-2s flew west over the Pacific to act as decoys.
At a press conference on Sunday, Hegseth called the B-2 pilots who dropped the bombs on targets in Iran “our boys on those bombers” even though there were female pilots, according to the New York Times.
At Thursday’s press conference Hegseth was asked about erasing the role female pilots played in the mission. Predictably he blamed the media.
“When I say something like our boys and bombers — see, this is the kind of thing the press does, right?” Hegseth began in a clip highlighted by Mediaite. “Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot. That’s fantastic. She’s fantastic, she’s a hero.”
“But when you spin it as, because I say our boys and bombers as a common phrase, I’ll keep saying things like that, whether they’re men or women, very proud of that female pilot, just like I’m very proud of those male pilots,” he continued. “I don’t care if it’s a male or a female in that cockpit and the American people don’t care but it’s the obsession with race and gender in this department that’s changed priorities and we don’t do that anymore. We don’t play your little games.”
