Fox News host Joey Jones was criticized for his complaints about the "weak" U.S. Navy sailors who have complained about the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been deployed in the Middle East since November of 2025.
Jones is a Marine veteran who spent eight years in the military and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He was seriously wounded by an IED in Afghanistan in 2010, sustaining severe injuries to his arms and wrists and losing both legs above the knee.
On Saturday’s episode of The Big Weekend Show, Jones criticized an unnamed sailor after the program aired a CNN clip featuring the service member describing conditions aboard the carrier.
In the July 10 interview with Pamela Brown, the sailor said morale had deteriorated across the ship and that food supplies were running low, leaving sailors at times with little more than noodles and tuna, along with occasional hot dogs or corn dogs.
To this, Jones said:
“That little… you know what I ate in Afghanistan for six months using a little burner? I ate Ramen noodles… that’s what I ate, and I was happy to have it, because the alternative was an MRE or something cooked by the Afghan guy who was too stupid to be given a gun and they let him be the cook."
“How weak are you?! On TV, complaining about tuna and noodles? 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.”
Jones sarcastically suggested that he could understand why the sailor “might’ve got bored” during the deployment, but made clear that he had little sympathy for the service member’s complaints:
“To sit there and say that it was terrible because you had a corndog and a hot dog? I would’ve traded a block of C-4 to the Taliban for a hot dog by about July 2010."
“I just do not understand the mentality — if this is a representation of who our military is now, and I’m not saying it is, but there’s at least enough for some of these trash rags to print about it, if this is who we are, we’re just Rome sitting here waiting to burn. We’ve got nothing left. It makes me fume.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Jones' remarks exposed him and Fox News to heavy criticism.
Jones' remarks came amid reports of poor conditions aboard the Lincoln, including sailors allegedly being served spoiled food and several reported attempts to go overboard during the carrier’s extended deployment amid the Iran war. Trump administration officials have largely dismissed those reports.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the Navy’s treatment of the crew, saying sailors have access to everything the military can provide despite the difficult conditions and unusually long deployment.
President Donald Trump went further, dismissing reports that sailors had attempted to jump overboard and saying the deployment, which began in November 2025, is “not nearly long enough.”
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