In recent campaign stops, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged to rip the woke out of America’s armed forces, if he’s elected president.
The Republican governor, a U.S. Navy veteran who served a tour of duty in Iraq, told crowds in South Carolina and Iowa that he would eagerly reverse the left-wing social engineering the Biden administration is carrying out at the Pentagon.
“It pains me to have veterans come up to me now and say they would not want to see their kids or their grandkids joining the U.S. military because of everything that’s going on,” DeSantis told a crowd in South Carolina on Friday.
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The Biden administration is “imposing a political agenda on the military,” he added.
“Woke ideology, gender ideology, all these things — and what is the effect of that? They’re driving warriors away.”
Both recruiting and morale are low, DeSantis argued.
So, he added, “we’re gonna go in on day one and take all that Biden nonsense, we’re ripping it out by the roots, and we are gonna restore this nation’s military to its proper glory.”
DeSantis added that, in the face of Chinese aggression and other threats, “We gotta be able to project that power, and we’re gonna do it. We’ll get it done.”
Continuing the theme in Iowa on Saturday, DeSantis said the troops he served with in Iraq were “honorable, patriotic people.”
“For you veterans in the crowd, thank you for your service. I think all of us have a sense of pride in being able to wear the cloth of your country,” he added. “But we’ve seen the military become politicized in recent years.”
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“You’ve seen the woke agenda being imposed on it,” he continued. “On day one as commander in chief, I rip it all out.”
“We’re getting the military back to basics. We’re gonna improve morale. And we’re gonna get people to wanna join the military again.”
Two months ago, the Army, Navy and Air Force all announced that they would likely miss their recruiting goals for this year. Only the U.S. Marine Corps, who has given in the least to woke ideology, would achieve its goal.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger told reporters at a conference in March that woke DEI programs are not a factor in the Corps because Marines are mission-focused.
“At the end of the day, the goal is to make sure that the unit is prepared for combat. That’s why we have a Marine Corps — to try and prevent a conflict, and if one comes, to make sure that we win it. So, building cohesive teams is part of that,” Berger said at the time.
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“I have seen zero evidence of any policies that detract from that. Everything — and I travel almost every week, mainly to listen, mainly to ask questions, not to talk but to listen. And I’m looking for anything that distracts them from their warfighting focus, what it takes to fight and win. I don’t see any evidence of that.”
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