But his speech still contained nothing objectionable.
When someone makes correct points, they don't become incorrect if that person has said some other thing before.
Multiple things can be true at the same time. The attempt to broker a peace with Putin by leaving Ukraine out in the cold can be a bad idea, and the things Hegseth pointed out in his speech can be genuine problems.
Hegseth said, and I quote:
"we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective"
This is a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, the thing he said in the sentence before that he wanted to uphold.
You don't broker a peace deal by just letting an invader keep the disputed territory they currently occupy. IF Ukraine were agreeable to it, they could perhaps look at exchanging this territory for a (significant) material price, or other concessions such as Russian demilitarization. But you don't just start from the position "well that's lost already, suck it up"
