Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is back to full duty, though he was hospitalized in the intensive care unit for days last week and didn’t tell anyone. The Biden White House was unaware that a high-ranking cabinet member was out of action following complications from what is described as an “elective medical procedure.” The Pentagon didn’t tell the Biden White House about Austin’s condition for days.
Lloyd was hospitalized on January 1, but it wasn’t until January 4 that the Defense Department decided to inform senior White House aides about his condition. The Pentagon made the disclosure last Friday afternoon. In the wake of this disclosure this weekend, the defense secretary admitted he could’ve handled this differently, taking full responsibility for keeping his hospital stay secret. We’re lucky that a major national security crisis didn’t arise in this period, where the world appears to be on fire from the Gaza Strip to Kyiv (via Washington Post):
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday night accepted blame for keeping his hospitalization secret for days, saying he realizes there are concerns over his doing so and takes “full responsibility” for failing to disclose the matter.
Austin, 70, conceded in a statement that he “could have done a better job of ensuring the public was appropriately informed” he has been receiving treatment for what remains an unspecified medical matter, and committed to “doing better.”
The secretary was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday for an elective procedure, developed undisclosed medical complications and remained hospitalized on Saturday.
“I want to thank the amazing doctors and nursing staff at Walter Reed for the exceptional care they have delivered to me and for the personal warmth they have shown my family,” Austin said, adding that he is “very glad to be on the mend and look forward to returning to the Pentagon soon.”
The secrecy surrounding Austin’s hospitalization, disclosed by the Pentagon after 5 p.m. on Friday, has raised questions about how effectively the Defense Department would have handled an emergency over the last week, as the United States balances wars in Ukraine and Gaza that have prompted instability in several parts of the world.
As defense secretary, Austin is second only to President Biden in the chain of command responsible for making the military’s decisions. That role can be reassigned to another official, but the Pentagon has been ambiguous about what happened in this case, saying only that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks “was prepared to act for and exercise the powers” of the defense secretary, if required.
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Given this administration’s record of screwing up the basics, I don’t trust that all would have been well at the Pentagon should a major crisis have arisen. Every cabinet member in this clown show of an administration has proven to be grossly incompetent. We have a Treasury Secretary who doesn’t know what she’s doing, a Homeland Security chief who is allowing an immigration crisis to fester, among other things, and a transportation secretary who oversaw a complete meltdown at the FAA. Who can do their job here? And why was keeping this a secret the go-to option for the Pentagon?
Oh, his chief of staff was sick? These are middle school-level excuses:
He was admitted to the ICU for both his medical needs and privacy. The delay in notifying the White House and the deputy secretary is because Austin’s chief of staff had an illness.
— Eleanor Watson (@ellee_watson) January 7, 2024
Guy will have more on this later today.
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