indeed retain his trident pin, which signals his membership as a navy seal. that is notable because that is what defense officials had been raising concerns about. in fact, the defense department says that richard spencer was fired because he tried to work out an arrangement with the white house going around mark esper to allow exactly this to happen. to allow eddy gallagher to retire while maintaining his membership in the navy s.e.a.l.s. so this is really quite remarkable circumstance that we re seeing particularly because the president is ultimately getting the exact outcome that he wanted despite all those concerns and even in the wake of the firing of in th navy secretary. i want to get a military voice in here now. joining us is retired lieutenant general mark hurtling. what s your reaction to all this? confusion. me too. there s so many stories involved in this. i think ryan and jeremy just
saying the secretary of defense, mark esper, had found out that spencer had conducted these secret talks supposedly with the white house about the fate of eddy gallagher who was due to face a review board about whether he would keep his status as a navy s.e.a.l. according to the pentagon spencer had made a secret deal with the white house in that he intended to keep gallagher and the navy s.e.a.l.s to allow the review to go forward. we re hearing two very different stories. one from president trump who says spencer was fired in a tweet, spencer was fired because of how he handled the gallagher case overall and cost runs with regard to navy contracting and we got a letter from spencer himself. he said he was fired because of his refusal to follow an order that he thought would violate good order and discipline that is unethical, that is likely referring to the gallagher case here and president trump s clearly stated desire to keep gallagher in the navy s.e.a.l.
brought up the different aspects to this. in reading the termination letter if you will of secretary spencer, there was a whole lot more to this than what s being reported right now. it s certainly understandable secretary spencer went behind the president behind secretary esper, the defense secretary s back as he, secretary esper and general milly were petitioning the president to back off of this case and let it go through the administrative processes of determining whether or not chief gallagher should retain his pin. that s understandable. you don t go to your boss boss and petition without letting your boss know. if that all happened, that s true. i can understand esper being pissed. but the other piece of this is for the last three days there has been reporting, good reporting about the fact that secretary spencer is prepared to resign, prepared to offer his letter of resignation because he s defending the navy
three different versions why richard spencer was forced to vezine in the wake of this eddy gallagher controversy. let s read what the president was saying. he says i was not pleased with the iwith way navy s.e.a.l. gallagher s trial was handled by the navy. despite this was completely exonerated on all charges and like wise large cost over runs from past administrations s contracting procedures were not addressed to my satisfaction. therefore secretary of innavy richard s services i have terminated by secretary mark esper. he then goes onto thank richard esper for his service and he says he plans to nominate the ambassador to norway who is a retired admiral of the navy. the president calls him a man of great achievement and success. now, what s also notable in to president s tweets here is that he says that eddy gallagher will
official, mark esper, and the top military leader, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, mark milley, opposed to president trump s desire essentially to prevent them from expelling eddie gallagher from the navy s.e.a.l.s and now you have mark esper, the head of the pentagon, asking for richard spencer s resignation, the secretary of the navy. let me read you the top of this statement from the dod spokesman jonathan hoffman. he writes, secretary of defense esper has asked for the resignation of secretary of the navy richard spencer after losing trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor over conversations with the white house involving the handling of navy s.e.a.l. eddie gallagher. he goes on to say that essentially what richard spencer did here, according to the pentagon, is that he went around the defense secretary, mark esper, spoke directly to the white house and proposed to them that they could restore eddie gallagher s rank, something that the president did unil