THE HILL: Former Defense secretary: Obama ‘double-crossed’ me.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he felt President Obama “double-crossed” him during his tenure over budget cuts to the Pentagon.
In a Fox News report Friday that explored the president’s approach to the military, Gates said Obama had promised him that there wouldn’t be any “significant changes” in the defense budget for a while.
When asked by Fox whether Obama kept to his word, Gates replied, “Well I think that began to fray. ‘Fray’ may be too gentle a word.”
According to the report, Gates was told to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget after already having slashed it.
“I guess I’d have to say I felt double-crossed,” Gates said. “After all those years in Washington, I was naïve.”
The former defense secretary added that he advised Obama to slow the cuts to the military because it would endanger U.S. troops.
The tipoff should have been when he said, “If you like your world’s-best military, you can keep your world’s-best military. Period.”