Tuberville said, “It’s outrageous that the head of the largest military in history has been hospitalized for a week and he didn’t tell anybody. You know what that tells me? There’s no respect for Joe Biden being the President of the United States. Somebody was told, I promise you that, but they didn’t tell Biden because he’s the Rodney Dangerfield of being President, no respect. This puts us in danger. Thank God our enemies didn’t take advantage of it. These people just spent months lecturing me about acting officials, these promotions I’ve been holding for abortion. They’ve been telling me Sen. Tuberville’s holding back on military readiness, and we have an AWOL Secretary of Defense that doesn’t tell anybody. … At the end of the day, this is Joe Biden’s responsibility. He should have been fired.”

[I’d forgotten about this episode with Tuberville, at least as to how it relates to Austin’s scandal now. Tuberville’s right to point out this hypocrisy. I wonder how many of the media outlets that hyperventilated over Tuberville’s holds on Pentagon promotions will demand real accountability from Austin over his much-more-real damage to military readiness. — Ed]