General Jack Keane appeared on Fox Business’s Varney & Co to dispute GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina‘s claim that he was forced to “retire early” by the Obama administration because he told the president “what he didn’t want to hear.”
The video below, posted to MediaMatters.org, shows a clip from Tuesday night’s CNN/Facebook Republican debate where Fiorina lists off military generals who she plans on bringing back if she were to be named president.
“I would bring back the warrior class,” Fiorina said when asked how she planned to defeat ISIS. “General (David) Petraeus, (Stanley) McChrystal, (James) Mattis, (Jack) Keane and (Lt. Gen Michael) Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know, every one was retired early because they told President Obama things that he didn’t want to hear.”
On Gen. Keane, Fiorina said she "didn't misspeak," adding the Obama administration hasn't taken him seriously. "I would listen to him.”
— Ashley Killough (@KilloughCNN) December 16, 2015
To the credit of Varney, he called out Fiorina’s claim and even went as far as to invite one of the aforementioned generals, retired Gen. Jack Keane, to address her commments.
“Did you in fact, general, give advice to President Obama, which he didn’t want to hear and didn’t take?” Varney asked the Fox News military analyst General Keane.
“No, I have never spoken to the president,” Keane responded. “That’s not accurate,” he said of Fiorina’s description of his forced early retirement, adding, “and I never served this administration.
I served the previous administration.” Keane, of course, served as vice chief of staff of the United States Army under former president George W. Bush.
Possibly not hearing about Keane’s assessment, Fiorina would later reaffirm her statements to a CNN reporter.
Watch:
Featured image via screen grab
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