Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Newsmax on Wednesday that if he is elected president in 2024, he will end wokeness in the military, believing it will fix low morale and poor recruiting that the armed forces have experienced under the culture-conscious Joe Biden administration.
In a campaign speech Tuesday in South Carolina, DeSantis, who is in a distant second place behind former President Donald Trump among 2024 Republican presidential candidates, unveiled his "Mission First" proposal for the Pentagon.
"I'm a Navy veteran. I served in Iraq. I got to do a lot of things, and I was always very proud of that," DeSantis said while appearing on "Eric Bolling The Balance." "I think most veterans are very proud of having worn the cloth of their country. Many of them come up to me now, and they say, 'I would not want my kids or grandkids joining today's military.'"
"Why? We see things like the Navy using drag queens for recruiting. You see the military services indulging in social experimentation at the expense of readiness, lethality. It's not good for morale," he continued.
"They have driven a lot of warriors off by those policies, as well as the unscientific COVID-19 vax mandates, which were not justifiable, particularly for the service members that had already recovered from COVID."
DeSantis said the military’s recruiting crisis is the worst it has faced since the draft was halted in 1973 as U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended.
"You can't possibly compete with China if we're not attracting good people to want to serve in the military," DeSantis said. "I ... see some of the stuff that they're doing with the wokeness, with the politicization.
"China is laughing at us. Our military right now is concerned about things like climate change and how they do operations to ensure that they're reducing so-called carbon emissions. China doesn't care about that. China is going to burn all the coal they need to be able to get the job done."
DeSantis said the Biden administration’s policies have put the U.S. military at a competitive disadvantage and facing a recruiting deficit, and morale is low. But he promised all of that will change if he is elected president.
"We're going in day one, no more wokeness in the military," he said. "We're eliminating so-called DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — which is basically dividing people based on identity politics. When you join the military, it's not about you as an individual. Everyone's got their own things.
"The question is, Can that be put aside for the good of the unit?" he added. "I think what they're doing now is they're trying to elevate these differences and play social experimentation. So we're going to get rid of all of that.
"We're going to focus it back on mission. We’ll have some changes for the top brass, of course, but I think it's going to set a very good standard, and I think you're going to see recruiting rebound as a result of getting it right."
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