As Pete Hegseth was grilled at his confirmation hearing for defense secretary, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told Newsmax on Tuesday, the United States military is at its weakest point in a long time.
"We've been attacked from the top down," Tuberville said on "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "From the Pentagon, from all the leadership, the DEI, all the wokeism, all those things."
At the hearing, Hegseth was questioned by senators about his past comments expressing concern about women in the U.S. military serving in combat, but he stressed repeatedly those remarks were about potentially eroding "standards" with regard to "military readiness" for combat.
"You can't drop your standards," Tuberville said. "You can't say, OK, we've got this for men and this for women. The backpacks are heavy and again, if you can do it, you can do it. There's a lot of men that can't go through training for the military. They can't pass the specifications. It's not for everybody. This is not affirmative action. This is for the best people that can defend and train and go after the people that are our enemies and do the best they can in terms of a group, as a team, not just a few."
Tuberville said another issue facing the military is the inability to recruit.
"We've got a lot of these woke universities that are teaching our kids to hate our country," Tuberville said. "Why in the world would you fight for a country that you've been taught to hate? We have got to make sure that our young people understand the significance of a strong military. You can talk about inflation, you can talk about crime, borders and all that but if you don't have a strong military, none of that makes any difference because we're going to be overtaken."
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