April 6, 2020

SecNav Unloads on Carrier Captain

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According to the Daily Caller, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly flew to Guam Monday “and delivered a fiery speech to the sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt after their captain was fired over a leaked letter pleading for those infected with coronavirus.” Fiery indeed: he says Captain Brett Crozier was either “too naive or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this” and calls his letter a “betrayal.” CNN has confirmed the story. Here’s the text:

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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