On Monday, President Donald Trump announced a deal with NATO to help furnish Ukraine with new weapons in that country's ongoing war with Russia. The President also made it clear that if Vladimir Putin didn't come up with a peace deal within 50 days, the U.S. would impose tough new sanctions.
Ahead of that announcement, ABC15's Nick Ciletti spoke with Arizona Senator Mark Kelly to discuss the ongoing conflict, his candid words for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and his concerns if the war wages on.
Senator Kelly, a Democrat, is also a retired Navy Captain who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He recently returned from a trip to Romania, where he met with U.S. troops and NATO officials.
Ciletti asked Sen. Kelly about the back-and-forth decisions by the Trump Administration when it came to supplying weapons for Ukraine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had reportedly cancelled a weapons shipment without notifying the White House. President Donald Trump later announced that weapons shipments would continue.
"What clowns this administration has turned out to be," said Sen. Kelly. "Pete Hegseth is not qualified for this job in any way. Finally, some of my Republican colleagues are catching on...He unilaterally cuts off weapons for our ally to defend themselves and doesn't check with the White House? I mean, you could put a high schooler on the job and he'd probably know enough to do that?"
Sen. Kelly went on to say Sec. Hegeth should be fired. He made similar calls back in April after it was reported that Sec. Hegseth and others had shared sensitive information regarding a U.S. military operation in Yemen.
"He should have been fired immediately," says Sen. Kelly. "The President should have fired him after he was sharing all that information on Signal. He should have been fired immediately."
But the White House has defended Hegseth and stood by him, and they are taking a similar position regarding the weapons situation with Ukraine.
In a recent statement to CNN, the White House said the U.S. was trying to "ensure all support going to all foreign nations aligns with America's interests."
The White House went on to say the President, "has made the decision to continue providing defensive weapons to Ukraine to help stop the killing in this brutal war."
The White House concluded by saying, "The President has full confidence in the Secretary of Defense."
Some Republicans have brought up concerns about the cost of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. According to reporting from ABC News from earlier this year, Congress had allocated $174 billion for the war.
Sen. Kelly says the cost of Russia gaining more power in the region would be much larger.
"If the Russians are successful in Ukraine, I am fairly confident that Putin will decide to go somewhere else," explains Sen. Kelly. "And it could be a Baltic country - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia... It could be Finland or Poland or Romania, where I was just visiting, or Moldova. These countries are NATO members and NATO allies...and we have an obligation to defend these other countries. If you want to talk about what's going to cost a lot of money to the American taxpayer, it's that. This is inexpensive to try and make sure Vladimir Putin is not successful and takes his ass back to Moscow and just disappears."
ABC15 reached out to the Department of Defense to get a response on Sen. Kelly's comments, but have not heard back yet. As mentioned above in this article, the White House has said President Donald Trump stands by the job Sec. Hegseth is doing.
