If we can’t trust the Biden administration to reveal that the defense secretary has cancer — now, of all times, as the Mideast burns, the Ukraine war rages and China threatens — how can we trust the White House on more important questions?
Like, say, accurate health news about an 81-year-old president in obvious mental and physical decline during an election year?
Yes, House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers’ probe into Lloyd Austin’s cancer chicanery is beyond justified.
The American people need an accounting, from Austin, of exactly what he was doing from his hospital bed and what on earth he was thinking when he decided to conceal his medical issues.
They also need an accounting from the administration of why it would cooperate with such clumsy dishonesty.
If the stakes weren’t deadly high enough to invite global disaster, the Austin affair would be a comedy of errors.
The man ended up in Walter Reed after complications from a prostate cancer procedure in December led to his hospitalization earlier this month.
The deputy drafted to cover for him apparently had no idea what was going on, as she was on vacation in Puerto Rico.
She only found out about her boss’s hospitalization a day before the public did.
Now Biden — who should have demanded Austin’s resignation the instant it became clear the man was hiding the truth — is instead letting him remain in his position.
So as bad as Austin’s dereliction was, Biden’s is even worse.
Either he’s OK with a potentially disastrous disruption of the chain of command even as US service members are drawing combat pay in the Middle East (among other crises) or he really is too senile to notice when his military No. 2 goes AWOL.
How can the man the American public entrusted with defending the country from all enemies foreign and domestic possibly do that if he won’t fire untrustworthy underlings?
Secretary Austin and President Biden both owe the public complete transparency on issues like this.
The fact that neither sees fit to provide it means they are both unfit to serve.