President Donald Trump’s oft-hailed favorite general, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, slightly broke from his boss on viewing Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a unreliable counterpart in peace talks.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Caine on whether Iran has designs to use a nuclear weapon on Israel, China has designs to move on Taiwan, and whether Putin would “stop at Ukraine.”
“I don’t believe he is,” Caine said to the latter during Wednesday’s defense budget hearing before the Senate subcommittee on appropriations on armed services.
“Remains to be seen,” Hegseth said, when posed the same rapid-fire question.
“It doesn’t remain to be seen,” Graham shot back, adding that Putin “tells everybody around what he wants to do.”
Graham, rebuked by critics as a “warmonger” – sometimes even from the right – urged Hegseth and Caine to listen to American military rivals Iran, China, and Russia to ostensibly listen to their public statements as taking them at their word.
“I like what you’re doing; I just think we gotta get this stuff right,” Graham said, as Hegseth and Caine seemed reluctant to say Iran would use a nuclear weapon on Israel.
“The point is,” Graham added, “we need to hit the enemy before they hit us.”
Increased defense spending is a large part of Trump’s agenda and will be a hotly debated piece of the Senate’s markup of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, criticized on the fiscal right for increase the debt ceiling and failing to cut enough of the spending from former President Joe Biden’s record-high spending levels.
While the push for more funding for defense has the support of many, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn does not support Graham, who has openly called for the regime change, if not outright assassination, of Putin.
“I urge President Trump to also distance himself from demonstrated war mongers in our own government, chief among whom is U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina,” Flynn wrote in a rebuke this weekend. “Those who love wars fought by others are no friends of America and have no entitlement to be friends of the president.”
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