Republican Rep. Steve Russell criticized Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson Thursday over her latest interview about the deaths of four U.S. soldiers in Niger.
The Pentagon released a report about those deaths Thursday and indicated that they don’t believe anyone was to blame for the ambush. Wilson blasted the report in an interview with The Washington Post, calling it “suspicious” and “unsettling.”
“How rampant is the culture in the Department of Defense in filing those, what you might call, misleading reports?” MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson asked Rep. Russell.
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“Well, I don’t think it’s rampant at all,” Russell replied. “What you’ve got to look at is the third special forces group has worked in Africa for decades…they’re not out there as cowboys.”
Jackson pushed back by specifically referencing Wilson’s criticism of the report, stating, “Frederica Wilson, a colleague of yours there in Congress, a Democrat of course, has questions about this.”
“We’ve been in some of the same hearings together, she came in for one of our classified hearings,” Russell responded. “With respect to Ms. Wilson — and I served on a committee with her last session of Congress — I don’t think she has the context or the comprehension of the military operations, quite frankly.”