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Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the “media should be ashamed” of their coverage of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense.

Mullin said, “You have Pete, who is a combat veteran, two Bronze Stars, he was a major in the Army. He’s been in the public sector. He’ll go there and make the changes in the Defense Department that need to take place. I think he’s exactly the one we need, which is why I believe he will get confirmed at the end of the day.”

After playing a clip of Hegseth from fellow FNC host Will Cain’s podcast, Mullin continued his defense.

Mullin said, “Jake, that wasn’t him saying he had an alcohol problem. That was him being honest unfortunately, a lot of our combat vets have come back and faced the same thing that they’re sitting there and they they were they had their identity in the service. They had a job to do. They were responsible for certain things, and they get out of the service and they’re back and they’re sitting there twiddling their thumbs. They’ve had a lot of experiences that the regular population doesn’t. They have these memories, these thoughts, these sounds, the smells that are still coming back to them and and they turn to drinking with their buddies. That doesn’t mean that they had a drinking problem. That means that every combat veteran has had the same issues. That’s why they have VFW set up. That’s why they have American Legion set up. What he was describing is what most combat veterans have faced.”

He added, “For media to go after him and start describing that as a drinking problem is individuals. That doesn’t understand combat veterans because they’ve never been there, they’ve never been in combat, they’ve never seen the horrific stuff that comes by, that they’ve never tasted the dirt in their mouth. They’ve never heard the horrible sounds in their ears. They never had the sights that they can’t get rid of. They’ve never had the dreams in the middle of the night. I think it’s hypocritical for them to even question that. Now, if he did have a drinking problem, that would be obvious. But to make something out of it that isn’t there just because he’s going through secretary of defense, the media should be ashamed of themselves. They should put themselves in their shoes and every other combat veterans shoes before they go out there and criticize him.”

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