Outrage over President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for Defense Secretary was readily undercut by the current “qualified” leadership that marked a staggering failure seven years running.
Throughout the 2024 presidential cycle, projection was a constant as leftist talking heads demonized and maligned conservatives on every issue despite their own blatant shortcomings. Much like Vice President Kamala Harris had claimed she could improve the economy while ending her own campaign in debt, attacks on the qualifications of Pete Hegseth as SecDef crumbled amid reporting the Pentagon had failed its seventh consecutive audit.
During a press briefing Friday, Undersecretary of Defense Michael McCord, comptroller and chief financial officer for the Pentagon, detailed how the DOD had been unable to properly account for how a budget of more than $824 billion was spent once again according to the 2024 fiscal year full financial statement audit.
Under the first Trump administration, the Pentagon had become legally obligated to conduct audits but had yet to achieve a clean audit once since the 2018 mandate. Out of 28 entities conducting independent audits for the Defense Department: three opinions were pending, nine recorded unmodified audit opinions, one had a qualified opinion and 15 received disclaimers.
“Momentum is on our side and throughout the department. There is a strong commitment and belief in our ability to achieve an unmodified opinion on behalf of the department’s senior management,” McCord spun positively during Friday’s briefing. “I assess that DOD continues to make progress toward the Congressional mandate for achieving an unmodified audit opinion in FY ’28. We were already halfway there last year in terms of assets under clean opinions.”
When specifically asked about the failure by Bloomberg News Tony Capaccio, the undersecretary responded, “I would think that’s very unfair if you say that. I — do not say we failed. As I said, we have about half clean opinions. We have half that are not clean opinions, so.”
“If someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know what you call the student or the report card a failure,” he went on despite 50% falling well below the threshold for a typical failing grade. “We have a lot of work to do and… but — I think we’re making progress as I said.”
The audit itself cost $178 million and employed an estimated 1,700 auditors.
While uproar had yet to relent over Trump’s picks to fill his cabinet, public reaction to the Pentagon’s consecutive failures called attention to Hegseth’s nomination as well as the president-elect’s planned advisory commission, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), that would be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Never let anyone tell you that Pete Hegseth isn’t qualified when all they do is fail under the current regime,” said Townhall columnist Dustin Grage while syndicated radio host Jesse Kelly opined, “However much @VivekGRamaswamy and @elonmusk take their personal security seriously, it’s not enough and they should do more. Because I promise you, there will be dire consequences for anyone trying to stop a criminal empire of this size.”
Democrats have zero moral authority to criticize any of Trump’s picks.
— Nick Jay (@Nick_Jay_D) November 16, 2024
Also Kennedy because he will be in a most powerful position.
— (not) Orwell (@KES_Alaska) November 16, 2024
Pretty sure @PeteHegseth won’t let this happen for an 8th time.
— khsuxdik (@khsuxdik) November 16, 2024
$824 Billion budget and they can’t keep track of it…
Don’t worry DOGE about to fix that.— Plato_or_playdoh (@platoORplaydoh) November 16, 2024
D.O.G.E. gonna make it really easy to never fail an audit again.
— Justin Eack (@JustinEack) November 16, 2024
I bet we get to the bottom of the $Trillions of missing tax paid dollars under Trump and his cabinet
— County MAGA (@ShaBacksTheBlue) November 16, 2024
“Qualified” SecDefs gave us this
— Factotum (@emery__bored) November 16, 2024
