The Pentagon briefs reporters on Secretary LLoyd Austin's health following his secret hospitalization.

The Pentagon is finally releasing details about Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s multi-day hospitalization related to prostate cancer. However, the incident has left me wondering: what did China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin learn from this embarrassing fumble?

"The event reflected a disorderly US government," cackled China’s state-run mouthpiece Global Times on Jan. 8.

Sadly, Austin’s image came down a peg. Not because of any medical procedures, we all wish him a full recovery from prostate cancer, but because he’s not running a tight ship.

DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN DIAGNOSED WITH PROSTATE CANCER

Austin was a natural choice for Secretary of Defense because Biden’s team knew him well when he was the commander of U.S. Central Command. He’s been a huge success at keeping together the 50 nations who support Ukraine and he’s also been deeply engaged with Israel.

But this slip was costly for the USA.

First, Xi and Putin will be wondering if American nuclear command and control was ever compromised. The standard procedure is to swap in a replacement for the Secretary of Defense in the chain of command if the SecDef is briefly unavailable. You can understand why the Joint Staff and the Pentagon don’t like to go into details.........

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