During a morning segment on January 6, the weekend edition of Fox & Friends discussed the recent passage of H.B. 229, the Defend the Guard Act, in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. The panel, consisting of Will Cain, Pete Hegseth, and Kayleigh McEnany, were unanimously in favor of the legislation and vocally expressed their support.
Pete Hegseth is an author and regular guest host on Fox News who is currently enlisted in the Minnesota Army National Guard and previously deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hegseth explained his support for the bill and its internal logic in detail:
“New Hampshire is simply pointing out that it’s supposed to be Congress that declares war. It has become an executive branch function, and as a result unless the Congress declares war, New Hampshire doesn’t have to send troops for foreign wars. To me it makes a lot of sense. I spent most of my career as a National Guardsman, deployed multiple times with the National Guard to foreign wars. We got used to the idea that state National Guard are part of expeditionary forces, which is not traditionally the use of a National Guard. And so this is New Hampshire saying we don’t trust how the federal government is going to use our troops, so we’re willing to commit them when the American people, through their elected branch in Congress, commits those troops to a foreign war, then you can. I love this idea. I’m sure the National Guard Bureau is [grumbles]. I love states exerting their influence through a system of federalism, and the idea of protecting the prerogative of—why are we sending some young guy from New Hampshire to the eastern province of Afghanistan when you have a northern border problem, or floods that happen in New Hampshire and they’re not there to provide support for that? It’s an interesting development, it’ll be interesting to see if other legislatures do this and how the military reacts to it.”
Kayleigh McEnany is a regular guest host on Fox News and previously served as White House Press Secretary under President Donald Trump from April 2020 to January 2021. She asked, “But why are states having to tell the federal government [to] abide by the letter of the Constitution? I love it as well, but it’s an unfortunate state of affairs when the states are having to say abide by the text.”
Will Cain, a columnist and regular guest host on Fox News, previously endorsed the Defend the Guard Act when he interviewed Bring Our Troops Home Chairman Dan McKnight on an episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight.
You can watch the full segment below.
