WASHINGTON — As bipartisan scrutiny of the Trump administration’s military actions in the Caribbean grows, the Defense Department’s chief defender — Western Pennsylvania native and former congressional candidate Sean Parnell — sat down with one of the agency’s new “independent” correspondents this week and laughed about being the second-busiest person at the Pentagon.

“Second to the secretary,” Mr. Parnell said in the interview promoted by the right-wing platform InfoWars after the recent exodus of legacy news organizations at the Pentagon.

Mr. Parnell, who lost a Pittsburgh-area U.S. House race in 2020 and ran an ill-fated U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania in 2021, is the chief spokesman for what the administration is now calling the Department of War.

He’s become a leading voice de

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