Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly abruptly resigned Tuesday after an embarrassing speech to COVID-ravaged crew members of the Pacific carrier USS Roosevelt, in which he insulted their beloved captain, who he had fired only days before.
At one point from a PA speaker in Guam, Modly called the ship’s former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier “too naive or too stupid” to be in command.
The sting of the firing was still fresh for sailors hearing Modly’s words. Days earlier, they had chanted Crozier’s name and clapped rhythmically when the dismissed commander solemnly walked off the carrier.
“Everyone’s scared about this thing,” Modly said at another point in his address to sailors, referring to the coronavirus epidemic in an audio recording given to Task & Purpose. “If this ship was in combat, and there were hypersonic missiles coming at it, you’d be pretty f—— scared, too.”
Modly’s accusation was in response to Crozier’s March 29 email to two dozen Navy officials, sent over an unclassified system when the commander felt his crew was not getting the help he needed to stop the contagion from spreading onboard. The e-mail was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, breaching operational security and embarrassing the Navy.
Modly at first stood by the at-times rambling self-defense of his firing, then he apologized Monday night.
The blunder in Guam was enough for sailors to lose faith in their civilian leader, and for Modly to abandon ship, resigning Tuesday afternoon.
In a statement accepting his resignation, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Tuesday that Modly had put “both Navy and the Sailors above self,” and had resigned of his own accord so that the Roosevelt and the Navy could move forward.
As of Monday, the sidelined Roosevelt had already reported 173 COVID positive cases with 61% of its crew tested.
House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith told reporters Tuesday that Modly would have a hard time leading the Navy after the speech.
“What on earth was the acting secretary [to] think that that speech was a good idea?” he said on a media call before the resignation was made public.
“When I listened to the speech that Acting Secretary Modly gave, it was almost like he was trying to do sort of a half-ass imitation of how Donald Trump would have given a speech,” he added.
Smith quickly blamed President Trump for “undue command influence,” and cited Trump’s record of meddling in Defense affairs going back to the sacking of former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer for opposing Trump’s interference in the case of disgraced Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher.
“I see the creeping influence of Trump’s approach undermining the decision-making process within DoD,” Smith said.
The assessment also stems from Modly’s comments to Washington Post journalist David Ignatius that he had fired Crozier out of concern that Trump might intervene.
“The most chilling aspect of that is what he seemed to be saying is, ‘Look, I know what I should have done, but what I had to do was I had to say, What would President Trump want me to do?’” Smith said, discussing the Modly interview with Ignatius.
Following the resignation, Secretary Esper appointed the current Army Undersecretary, 27-year Navy veteran Jim McPherson as the new acting Navy secretary.
