"The integration of the military racially was a huge success. -- Pete Hegseth
Sure sounds a lot like George Wallace circa 1963, doesn't it?? Hegseth might as well have been barring the Pentagon's door!
That is, if you believe Kate Bedingfield, Biden's former communications director, now spinning wildly on DEI as a CNN commentator!
Today's CNN This Morning began a segment on Trump's changes to the military with a clip of Hegseth during his confirmation process making a statement that included the line above in praise of the racial integration of the military.
Bedingfield bizarrely cast Hegseth as the modern equivalent of a segregationist from back in the day:
"It's striking to me, if you listen to what the clip we just saw of Pete Hegseth saying integrating the military racially was successful, but what we're talking about now is different. There are real differences. If you took that sound bite, and you took it back to 1940, he would sound like people who are arguing against the racial integration of the military. "
Republican strategist Brad Todd pushed back on this obvious faceplant, and triggered Bedingfield when he said:
"Liberals don't really like the military much, so they want to use it to achieve a lot of other political domestic gains."
Bedingfield branded as "absurd" Todd's view that liberals don't like the military much. But statistics tend to bear Todd out.
A recent Pew study found that Republicans have a positive view of the military by roughly a 2:1 ratio, 64/34. But liberal Democrats are evenly split, with about as many approving of the military as disapproving of it: 50/49.
In his statement, Hegseth differentiated between racial differences, which are superficial characteristics, with women and transgenders, whose differences are real and can create complications for the military.
Note: Kayla Tausche sat in for Kasie Hunt today. While she wasn't wildly partisan, at one point Tausche did let her liberal leaning slip. She described one of Trump's executive orders as "gutting" the military's diversity programs. Only a DEI fan would make the changes sound like a disembowelment!
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
1/28/25
6:16 am ETPETE HEGSETH: The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is, our diversity is our strength.
The integration of the military racially was a huge success. But now we're pushing boundaries and lots of different levels that are different than that. Because men and women are different. Because being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences.
KAYLA TAUSCHE: That was now Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prior to his confirmation. And yesterday, his first day on the job, President Donald Trump signed four new executive orders that could reshape the U.S. military.
His directives include banning transgender service members, gutting the military's diversity programs, and reinstating, with back pay, members who were discharged for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
. . .
KATE BEDINGFIELD: It's striking to me, if you listen to what the clip we just saw of Pete Hegseth saying, integrating the military racially was successful, but what we're talking about now is different. There are real differences.
If you took that sound bite, and you took it back to 1940, he would sound like people who are arguing against the racial integration of the military.
So I just, there is a, it feels to me like they are trying to solve for a problem that doesn't exist. Women are serving in combat. They are doing so effectively. Of course, are there physical differences and limitations with women relative to men in terms of physical strength? Yeah, of course. But the military is effectively fighting solving for that in a way that's allowing women to serve.
And so creating this division and creating this barrier to people who want to serve their country, being able to do so, it's solving for a problem that doesn't exist.
TAUSCHE: He softened his stance a little bit on women serving in the military, suggesting that it's just about the standards for them.
BRAD TODD: The physical standard.
TAUSCHE: The physical standard.
TODD: The military has to have one standard, which is lethality. We have to have a lethal fighting force, and that has to be the only standard by which they judge who's in and who's out. Do you help make the United States more fearsome, more strong, more difficult to deal with in a combat situation?
We're peeling back a lot of the layers of social experimentation. You know, liberals don't really like the military much, so they want to use it to achieve a lot of other political domestic gains. That's what's going to come to an end if Pete Hegseth gets his way, although the Pentagon's a big bureaucracy. We'll see.
