From 28m
ago
11.55 EDT
What was
in Trump and Hegseth's astonishing speeches to US top military brass?
Here’s a
roundup of what was in those astonishing speeches we just heard delivered to a
mostly silent audience of top US military leaders by defense secretary Pete
Hegseth and Donald Trump.
Hegseth
announced that the military will require combatants to meet the “highest male
standard” in physical fitness tests. He acknowledged that this may exclude some
women from serving. “Standards must be uniform, gender neutral, and high,” he
said, and if that meant some women didn’t qualify, “it is what it is.”
He
ordered officers to focus on physical appearance and fitness, attacking what he
called the “tiring” sight of “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals”.
“It’s a bad look,” he said, adding that he was upping physical fitness testing
to twice a year.
He also
said this was an end to the “era of unprofessional appearances” and announced
that officers could no longer have beards.
Hegseth
vowed an end to diversity efforts and wanting to usher in a change to the
“politically correct” culture of the military – which had made the DOD “the
woke department” – and have a greater focus on “warrior ethos”. “We’re ending
the war on warriors,” he said.
Rallying
against “woke”, he said they were “fixing decades of decay” by doing away with
DEI programs, and ending the promotion of a “risk-averse” officer corps. He
said troops had been distracted by political correctness, racial quotas,
climate change, “gender delusions”, “woke garbage” and fears of being labeled
as “toxic” leaders.
He said
the department would review its definitions of “toxic”, “bullying” and “hazing”
“to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second
guessing”. “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive,
don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now,” the defense secretary
said.
He
announced wider departmental changes including ending anonymous complaints
procedures. He said the DOD’s Inspector General’s Office (which is
investigating him over Signalgate) would be “overhauled” as it had created a
culture of “walking on eggshells” and had been “weaponized, putting
complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat”. “No more
frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints,
no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no
more sidetracking careers, no more walking on eggshells,” he said.
He
justified his previous firing of senior commanders, saying that he went with
“his gut” and got rid of those he believed wouldn’t shift away from policies
set in previous administrations. He ominously added that he was certain more
leadership changes would be made.
He told
leadership that if the new standards he has unveiled makes their “hearts sink”
then they should “do the honorable thing and resign”.
In an at
times free-wheeling speech, Donald Trump commented on the remarkable silence in
the room before picking up on a number of these points, saying: “We went
through political correct where you had to have people who were totally unfit
to be doing what you’re doing,” he said. “Now it’s all based on merit.”
Trump
told his top military leadership that the US faced “a war from within”.
Repeating his criticisms of Democrat-led US cities, claiming “they’re very
unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one”, he added that
“this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room”.
He said
so-called “dangerous cities” should be used as “training grounds” for military
troops and the national guard. He suggested they were “going into Chicago very
soon” and said Portland, Oregon “looks like a war zone” [residents have said
this is “entirely divorced from reality”].
He said
that Hegseth will soon announce “major reforms to streamline military
acquisitions and expedite foreign military sales”, as many countries want to
buy US military equipment but it needs to be made faster.
Trump
also said he’s contemplating making the military “larger” and his
administration plans to make “more historic announcements” in the coming months
to “fully embrace the identity of the Department of War”.
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