In an unprecedented and highly unusual gathering, President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed 800 top military generals and admirals flown in from around the world for the meeting in Quantico, Virginia. Hegseth blasted “woke” policies and diversity initiatives.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth: “For too long we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts. … Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look.”
Meanwhile, President Trump defended his policy of deploying troops to U.S. cities and suggested to the officers gathered that they should view the domestic deployments as a training exercise.
President Donald Trump: “We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within, and we’re stopping it very quickly.”
Democratic Senator Jack Reed, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the meeting “an expensive, dangerous dereliction of leadership” by President Trump. We’ll have more on this story later in the broadcast.