Representative Matt Gaetz on Tuesday continued attacking Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin following a contentious exchange at a House Armed Services Committee hearing which ended with the two men shouting at each other after Mr Gaetz criticised the US military for what he described as “woke-ism” at the cost of combat readiness.
Mr Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is reportedly under investigation for alleged child sex trafficking, used his allotted five minutes of question time at a hearing on the 2023 US defence budget to berate Mr Austin, a former head of US Central Command who retired from the US Army as a four-star general, about a guest lecture at the National Defence University — a US Army staff college — delivered by French economist Thomas Picketty.
