Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly submitted his resignation on Tuesday morning and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Twitter that he’d accepted the resignation and named Under Secretary of the Army James McPherson to be his temporary replacement.
Modly resigned Tuesday morning following his controversial remarks to the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt about their fired captain, where he labeled him “too naive” and “too stupid.”
In a statement Esper wrote that Modly “resigned on his own accord, putting the Navy and the Sailors above self so that the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and the Navy as an institution, can move forward.
