Acting

CNN tells us:

The Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly blasted the now ousted commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt as “stupid” in an address to the ship’s crew Monday morning, in remarks obtained by CNN.

Modly told the crew that their former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was either “too naive or too stupid” to be in command or that he intentionally leaked to the media a memo in which he warned about coronavirus spreading aboard the aircraft carrier and urged action to save his sailors.

Who is Thomas Modly? A businessman who has served as Acting United States Secretary of the Navy since November 24, 2019. A whopping four months in the job and the highly relevant qualification of being a businessdude.

“It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, DC,” Modly said, according to a transcript of remarks Modly made to the crew, copies of which have been provided to CNN by multiple Navy officials.

I suspect those multiple Navy officials are the real kind as opposed to the businessdude until ten minutes ago kind, and I suspect they are pissed.

In remarks that were piped over the vessel’s PA system, Modly suggested Crozier leaked the memo on purpose or was “too naive or too stupid” to be in command if he didn’t think that sending it to over 20 people would not result in it getting out to the public.

“If he didn’t think, in my opinion, that this information wasn’t going to get out to the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this,” Modly said. “The alternative is that he did this on purpose.”

Modly went on to say it was a “betrayal of trust, with me, with his chain of command.”

That’s an interesting thing to say to that audience in that situation. He’s talking to the people whose lives were at risk because of a massive virus outbreak on the ship, and he’s whining about a betrayal of his trust. Crozier put his crew’s lives first, and Modly is telling that crew how naughty that was. I bet the applause was light and scattered.

A defense official familiar with Modly’s remarks offered his opinion of Modly’s address, saying the acting secretary “should be fired. I don’t know how he survives this day.”

Let’s hope so.

Several senior military officials, including the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, recommended against Modly’s decision to fire Crozier before an investigation into the matter was complete and in the midst of an evacuation, two US officials tell CNN.

The assholes have taken over the ship.

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