Jamelle Bouie
Role at the time: New York Times opinion columnist, posting on his own Bluesky account
Statement summary
Posting on Bluesky the night of Hegseth's post, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie described it as mocking children who wanted to learn, grow and serve their country, and predicted the press would not ask Hegseth to account for it because it had become habituated to the behaviour of people in the administration.
“the press has gotten completely habituated to the ugly and hateful behavior of the people in this government so i will be surprised if anyone ever asks hegseth why he thinks it is appropriate to mock children for wanting to learn, grow and maybe serve their country”
The speaker's own post. Bouie posted on the night of the original post, before most of the Canadian official reaction. He is separately recorded in the case concerning the Pentagon's fitness and grooming criteria for Hegseth's September 30 address.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Bouie characterises it as mocking children and calls the conduct ugly and hateful, which rejects it. The closest competing label is “Challenged the characterization”, because a large part of the post is about press behaviour rather than Hegseth's. That loses because the criticism of the press is framed around an assumption he states as settled, that the post mocked children, which is a direct evaluation of the conduct under scrutiny.