Fox News host Joey Jones erupted on sailors complaining about conditions aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier deployed in the Iran war, blasting them as “weak.”
In a segment Saturday on Fox’s The Big Weekend Show, Jones can be heard huffing out an annoyed breath as he listens to a member of the USS Abraham Lincoln’s crew complain about the food they are being served.
“How weak are you?! On TV, complaining about tuna and noodles?” Jones rants after the segment, which first aired on CNN Thursday, is done.
“I’m sorry, you volunteered to serve your country. You can come back, get out of the military, and do like all these Democrat veterans and complain about it, and make commercials, and be a sellout if you want to,” he continues.
The crew member is describing conditions on the ship, which have come under scrutiny following complaints from sailors and their families about food shortages, poor sanitation, and plummeting morale.
“I would say morale’s pretty low, and not just in the division, like in the ship entirely,” the unnamed crew member says. “We’re running pretty low on rations, I mean at some points in the day it would just be about noodles and tuna mixed in together, and that was it…sometimes you get a corndog, sometimes you get a hot dog.”
In response, Jones tells his other panelists that when he was deployed in Afghanistan, he survived for months on ramen and tuna packets, for the most part choosing to avoid the food prepared by a local cook.
“That’s what I ate, and I was happy to have it, because the alternative was an MRE [Military rations called meals ready-to-eat] or something cooked by the Afghan guy who was too stupid to be given a gun, and they let him be the cook,” Jones ranted.
He said the servicemen and women on the carrier—who have been at sea for over 250 days—were deployed for significantly less time than he was on the ground in war zones, and claimed they were much safer at sea, too.
Jones served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps, deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, while serving as an explosive ordnance disposal technician in Afghanistan, he stepped on an IED, losing both legs above the knee and severely injuring his right forearm and wrists.
He said he was “sorry” the Lincoln crew “might have got bored” but joked that by July 2010, he would have traded C4 [explosives] to the Taliban for better food.
“I just do not understand the mentality,” he continued. “If this a representation of who our military is now...we’re just Rome sitting there waiting to burn—we’ve got nothing left.”
He also questioned the commitment of the newest generation of military recruits.
“It makes me fume,” Jones said. “To that little kid, and whoever raised him, lord help ya if you ever go into a hot war on the ground.”
