Congressman: Pete Hegseth Must Reform ‘Woke’ Military
Ben Johnson /
As Democrats deride President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, one congressman says Hegseth is just the man to turn the Biden-Harris administration’s “woke and weaponized” military into a “strong and focused” fighting force.
Trump’s proposal to remove underperforming or politicized generals would actually depoliticize a Pentagon that once again failed its annual audit, he added.
Hegseth, an Ivy League graduate who served in the military, has been “wrongly criticized” as a lightweight, Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Monday. “We’re going to get a strong and focused military. Pete Hegseth has written books about it. He’s a well-educated, very successful combat veteran as an infantry officer, and I think he’s the right kind of leader. We have to get him confirmed.”
Trump’s Warrior Board Will Cut ‘Bloated’ Military
Democrats and the legacy media lumped in criticism of Hegseth with concern over Trump’s proposed executive order establishing a Warrior Board to review, and possibly remove, three- and four-star generals who moved up the ranks due more to their political views than their military prowess.
“Our senior ranks are already bloated. We have one officer for every nine enlisted soldiers. When we won World War II, we had one officer for every 30 enlisted soldiers,” Davidson told Perkins. “We’re very top heavy.”
Removing military officers has occurred numerous times under Democratic presidents. Barack Obama purged 197 military officers over five years. In 1941, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term, General George C. Marshall removed 600 officers over age or physical fitness concerns.
The Left has tried to portray this as part of the president-elect’s “war on democracy” and “norms.”
On Sunday, “ABC This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked if Trump plans to “fire or arrest” generals “he considers woke, or those close to former Chairman Mark Milley.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., just elected Michigan’s next senator, dismissed the tribunal as a “kangaroo court” that would, for the first time, introduce politics into the military. “I think we’re really at risk of politicizing the military in a way that we can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” said Slotkin.
But Davidson says the board would reverse the damage done by the Biden-Harris administration.
Observers Say Clinton, Obama-Biden-Harris Politicized the Military, Not Trump
The Clinton and Obama-Biden-Harris administrations politicized the military by using it as a tool for social experimentation, critics say.
Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy allowed closeted homosexuals to join the military for the first time in 1993. Barack Obama liberalized the policy, and the Biden-Harris administration extended it to transgender-identifying Americans. The Democratic administrations forced soldiers to sit through LGBTQ+ political propaganda at each step of the way. Biden-Harris also emphasized critical race theory and so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The U.S. Navy produced a widely mocked video in 2022 schooling soldiers on how the “proper” use of pronouns helps create “a safe space for everybody.” A video in the Navy’s online recruitment pilot program the following May featured a drag queen who uses the name “Harpy Daniels” (2nd Class Petty Officer Joshua Kelly). The entire Defense Department referred to male and female service members with the gender-neutral pronoun “themself” in its Manual of Military Decorations and Awards last Aug. 7, before reversing itself weeks later.
“One of the key woke elements they created is this three-letter acronym, DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” said Davidson. But DEI officers “are really just political officers” who “politicize every department, and they’re clearly doing it in the Department of Defense.”
The Biden-Harris administration requested $114.7 million for the Pentagon to teach “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” to the U.S. armed forces and deeply embed “DEIA values, objectives, and considerations in how we do business and execute our missions” last year.
That built on the administration’s commitment to critical race theory. As The Washington Stand’s Dan Hart reported, in 2022, “more than 600 documents were uncovered showing that West Point cadets are being immersed in CRT, with lessons on how ‘whiteness’ is ‘a location of structural advantage, of race privilege,’ how ‘racism is ordinary’ and ‘White Americans have primarily benefited from civil rights legislation.’” The materials directed cadets to use critical race theory principles to form their answers.
The Washington Stand’s Suzanne Bowdey produced a list of 25 incidences of the military promoting the woke agenda in the Biden-Harris administration’s first 21 months:
- January 2021: Biden Welcomes Transgenderism back into the Military, Scrapping Trump Policy
- January 2021: Army Punishes Chaplain for Opposing Transgenderism in the Ranks
- March 2021: Pentagon Launches Extremist Stand-Down
- March 2021: White House Announces Taxpayer-Funded Gender Reassignments for Troops
- March 2021: Navy Under Fire for Reading List that Promotes America as ‘Systemically Racist’
- May 2021: Space Force Suspends Lt. Colonel for Denouncing Marxism
- June 2021: DOD Asks for Money to Combat Climate Change
- June 2021: Critical Race Theory Infiltrates U.S. Military Academies
- June 2021: Military Defends Drag Show at Largest Training Center as ‘Essential to Morale’
- June 2021: Pentagon Warns Chaplains to Affirm the LGBT Lifestyle
- February 2022: Army Introduces Strategy to Fight the ‘National Security Threat’ of Global Warming
- April 2022: Military Offers ‘Compassionate Reassignments’ for Service Members in Red States
- April 2022: Defense Secretary Considers Adding Nonbinary or ‘Polygender’ Troops to Ranks
- May 2022: Air Force Library Forced to Cancel Drag Queen Story Hour after GOP Pressure
- June 2022: Marines Celebrate Pride Month with Rainbow Bullets
- June 2022: Gratuitous Pride Tweets Circulate across the Branches
- June 2022: Pentagon Hosts ‘Transgender Visibility and Progress’ Event
- June 2022: Langley Air Force Base Hosts a Taxpayer-Funded Drag Queen Show
- June 2022: Democratic Leaders Resurrect Push for Women in the Draft
- June 2022: Navy Launches Training Video on the Correct Use of Personal Pronouns
- June 2022: Army Investigates Chaplain for Celebrating the End of Roe v. Wade
- June 2022: Pentagon Expands Access, Leave, and Travel for Service Member Abortions
- September 2022: Veterans Affairs Announces the Start of Taxpayer-Funded Abortions
- September 2022: Military Accused of Indoctrinating Kids with Woke Gender Ideology, CRT in Base Schools
- September 2022: Air Force Cadets Warned Not to Use ‘Gendered’ Words like ‘Mom,’ ‘Dad’
The Biden-Harris administration also denied religious exemptions for those who refused to take the COVID-19 jabs, firing thousands of soldiers who refused to take the then-experimental shot.
Biden officials “know that, by and large, the vast majority of men and women who serve in the military lean to the Right. And those 260,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who did not take the vaccine are probably far more conservative,” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., at the time.
Only 43 of the roughly 8,000 soldiers dismissed for refusing to take the untested injection had sought to reenlist in the armed forces, according to military data furnished to CNN last October, the last full fiscal year of the Biden-Harris administration.
All of these ideas have impacted recruitment. The Army exceeded its 2023 recruitment goal of 55,000 by a mere 300 enlistees. The other service branches posted similar numbers. The number of men volunteering for military service has declined by 35% over the last decade, much of it during the Obama-Biden-Harris years.
Slotkin acknowledged in passing that “there’s issues with recruiting” but felt the Pentagon’s “equity” agenda remains worthwhile, because “we want a diverse force.”
“You inherently build a diverse unit [when] you take the most talented people at each of the skill sets required to succeed,” replied Davidson, “and the unit flourishes.” Unit cohesion and “the ability to shoot, move, and communicate lethal force is what makes our military strong.”
The news comes as the Pentagon has once again failed its audit.
Defense Department Fails Seventh Audit in a Row
On Sunday, the Biden-Harris administration’s Defense Department announced it had failed an audit for the seventh time, failing to account for how it spent its $824 billion budget. Of the 28 components of the Pentagon’s audit, only nine passed with an unmodified opinion; more than half (15 of 28) received a failing report with disclaimers.
Administration figures dismissed claims they were guilty of nonfeasance. “I do not say we failed,” said Michael McCord, the Biden-Harris administration’s undersecretary of defense comptroller and chief financial officer, last Friday. “We have about half clean opinions; we have half that are not clean opinions. So, if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure.”
A 50% grade is, indeed, a failing grade even under the most generous grading system.
The DOD, which has never passed an audit since they became legally mandated in 2018, is the only major government agency not to pass an audit.
McCord says passing an audit by 2028 is achievable—but not at the DOD’s current performance. “If you draw a trend line … back from when we started, from Year One to Year Seven, I don’t think it’s going to show you’re getting there in time if you don’t continue to pick up the pace,” said McCord.
Concerns have percolated for years about Pentagon accountability. Liberal comedian Jon Stewart broached the topic during an April 2023 interview with Biden administration Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, calling it a potential sign of “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“The fact that DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse. That is completely false right there,” deflected Hicks. “It’s suggestive that we don’t have an accurate inventory of what we have where.”
“So, in my world, that is waste,” replied Stewart.
As Hicks laughed dismissively at his argument, a staid Stewart replied, “I’m not looking to pick a fight with you, but I am surprised that the reaction to these questions is, ‘You don’t know what an audit is, Bucko.’”
The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to have a clean audit by 2028. “The fiscal and national security benefits that will come with the Pentagon finally being able to account for all of its assets are literally immeasurable and will continue to be until it gets its financial house in order,” said U.S. Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Congress should help push it over the finish line.”