‘Fox & Friends’ Celebrates Reports Trump Will Pardon American Soldiers Who Committed War Crimes
The crew of Fox & Friends was jazzed on Sunday morning over reports that President Trump might pardon American soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the White House has rushed requests for paperwork from the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney that it would need to pardon these soldiers over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend.
Fox’s Pete Hegseth was offended that the Times would even call what these servicemen did war crimes: “They’re not war criminals. They’re warriors who have been accused of certain things under review.”
Considering that a couple of the cases Trump is considering pardoning have already resulted in convictions, it is inaccurate to say they are under review. The military has reviewed the cases and has indicted or convicted the men of these crimes. And as a former Army JAG lawyer said on Twitter, the military’s justice system sometimes protects the rights of soldiers accused of war crimes better than the civilian courts protect defendants for much lesser offenses.
The soldiers Trump may pardon include Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was turned in for committing atrocities by members of his own platoon. Gallagher is accused of shooting multiple unarmed civilians and stabbing to death a defenseless teenage captive, an act he then bragged about in text messages home. His habit of picking off innocent civilians as a sniper was so bad that members of his team reportedly fiddled with the sights on his sniper rifle so he would miss more often.
Hegseth’s co-host Jedediah Bilah suggested that Trump’s pardons would have a “unifying” effect on the public, adding “If there’s one thing that unites people around the country, it is a love of our military and a love for those who have served.”
Hegseth agreed that it should be a “uniting issue,” but that “the left is going to attack him” by saying soldiers are “willy-nilly killing civilians. It’s all garbage.”
He added that people in “middle America” feel these soldiers “are the good guys. These are the war fighters.” Therefore, these voters will love Trump’s move.
It should be noted that Hegseth, a veteran who led an infantry platoon in Iraq, was at one time under consideration to head the Department of Veterans Affairs in the Trump administration. But his possible nomination ran into resistance from major veterans groups. So any of his claims to speak for veterans should be taken with a grain of salt.
Watch the clip up top, via Fox News.
