Rep. Don Bacon spent nearly three decades in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a brigadier general. He is a member of the Problems Solver Caucus and serves on the U.S. House Armed Services committee.?
Lately, he has again proven why he is the increasingly rare leader in Congress willing to put the country first.
In the wake of the Signal controversy – in which senior Trump administration officials unwittingly invited a journalist to join a chat discussing secret U.S. military plants to strike Yemen – most congressional Republicans kept their heads down.
Not Bacon, who worked in military intelligence and understood the importance of striking Houthi rebels to protect international shipping lanes, as well as the gravity of jeopardizing the operation’s security.
Bacon told CNN’s Manu Raju, “I will guarantee you, 99.99 percent with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones. So, I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.”
He went on to say, “There’s no excuse,” called it a “gross error,” and “They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device. I would have lost my security clearance in the Air Force for this and for a lot less.”?
Bacon also told ABC News that the incident “puts at risk our troops” and that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “should take accountability and say I made a mistake.”?
It’s not the first time this year that Bacon has shared views about foreign policy that put him at odds with the White House and others in his own party.
In the wake of the contentious White House meeting between President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, Bacon said:
“Ukraine wants independence, free markets, and rule of law. It wants to be part of the West. Russia hates us and our Western values. We should be clear that we stand for freedom,”
While too many Republicans are cowering in fear of political retribution in the form of a well-funded primary challenger or threats and attacks, Bacon is leading by putting our nation’s safety and security ahead of partisanship.?
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Lynn Schmidt
Lynn Schmidt holds a bachelor of science in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a masters of science majoring in political science from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She is a freelance columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a monthly contributor to The Fulcrum. Lynn lives in St. Charles, Missouri with her husband and two daughters.
