Duckworth shared that female forces play a crucial role in the military’s mission and Hegseth’s call to bar women from these roles would be detrimental.

“I would ask [Hegseth]: Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight? I’m pretty sure I was in combat when that happened.”

The senator flew combat missions as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot during the Iraq war. She lost both of her legs after her helicopter was hit by a grenade in 2004. The Purple Heart recipient said Hegseth’s comment about keeping women out of combat roles is a gray area considering the landscape of the modern battlefield. 

“This is not the Revolutionary War where there’s some sort of a line in the sand, and combat is on one side, and the rest of us can stay behind the side, and that’s not combat,” Duckworth told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Hegseth is a co-host of Fox News’s Fox & Friends Weekend and previously served as an Army National Guard officer in both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

During an appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast, Hegseth shared that he did not think women should serve in combat positions, called for Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. to be fired, and to end “woke” DEI initiatives. 

Hegseth said he was shocked he didn’t receive more backlash over his new book, “because I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.”

“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said.

On CNN, Duckworth said, “Look, he’s not qualified to serve as secretary of defense, and obviously, he’s made these comments about how he doesn’t think women should be in combat and that he wants to be able to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. I ask him, how does that strengthen our nation’s military?”