Lloyd Austin Faces Growing Calls to Be Fired

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is facing calls to be sacked because of a lack of communication about his hospitalization.

Austin issued a statement accepting responsibility after it took several days for the White House to be informed he had been in hospital last week. Newsweek contacted the Department of Defense on Monday for comment on this story.

Austin was admitted to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 1, Major General Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said on Friday. Austin suffered “complications following a recent elective medical procedure,” Ryder added in a brief statement.

A U.S. official told Reuters that President Joe Biden was informed about Austin’s hospitalization on Thursday evening, several days after his admission. A Biden administration official told CBS News that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the White House’s National Security Council were told on Thursday morning.

The Pentagon did not make Austin’s absence public due to medical and privacy considerations, the Defense Department said on Saturday, according to The Associated Press.

“I recognise I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed,” Austin said in a statement. “I commit to doing better.”

Austin added that it was “important to say: this was my medical procedure, and I take full responsibility for my decisions about disclosure.”

The defense secretary said: “I am very glad to be on the mend and look forward to returning to the Pentagon soon.” A defence department spokesperson quoted by the AFP news agency said Austin resumed his full duties on Friday.

However, numerous figures including former President Donald Trump have said Austin should be fired for his uncommunicated absence. This took place as the U.S. is undertaking key national security roles in the wars in Israel and Ukraine.

Writing on his social-media platform Truth Social, former President Trump accused Austin of “improper professional conduction and dereliction of duty.”

Trump wrote: “Failed Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin should be fired immediately for improper professional conduct and dereliction of duty. He has been missing for one week, and nobody, including his boss, Crooked Joe Biden, had a clue as to where he was, or might be. He has performed poorly, and should have been dismissed long ago, along with ‘General; Mark Milley, for many reasons, but in particular the catastrophic surrender in Afghanistan, perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our Country!”

On conservative social-media platform Gettr, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon wrote: “Austin Needs to be Fired Now.”

In another post, Bannon added: “General Austin Put the Nation @ Risk — Must be Terminated Immediately, Then a Criminal Referral.”

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote of Austin on X, formerly Twitter: “He isn’t capable of leading the Department of Defense. And he just proved it again by keeping it a secret when he was very sick and in the ICU.”

“The secretary of defence is the key link in the chain of command between the president and the uniformed military, including the nuclear chain of command, when the weightiest of decisions must be made in minutes,” Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, wrote in a statement. “If this report is true, there must be consequences for this shocking breakdown.”

Fellow Republican Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, said he was pleased to hear of Austin’s recovery, but added “the fact remains that the Department of Defence deliberately withheld the secretary of defence’s medical condition for days. That is unacceptable.”