President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture in the military and targeted other policies of past administrations Tuesday before hundreds of top U.S. military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.
Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about U.S. nuclear capabilities and said the nation's “dangerous cities” should be used as "training grounds for our military.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, offered his reaction to the speech.
"Yesterday was a grotesque and appalling display of culture war rhetoric to a group of some of our finest military commanders and civil servants," he said. "Imagine being one of those generals in that room yesterday who has spent 40 years in service to this country, 10, 15 combat deployments under your belt. You've lost friends and loved ones during these wars. You have uprooted your family every 3 years to serve. You're a special forces commander, a SEAL team commander. And you're pulled, yanked from your assignment, your post conducting missions and operations, to sit in a conference room and listen to Pete Hegseth lecture you about physical fitness, proper shaving techniques and discipline. And then the president gets up and talks about going to war with American cities and his favorite war movies. What a dishonorable display by Secretary of Defense and the president."
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Rep. Crow explained women who are serving in combat roles have already passed the same standards that men are held to.
"I want to be really clear here that combat units and combat specialties require high neutral combat focus standards now. There are women in Ranger units, there are women that have gone to Ranger school. They have met the same standard as every other recruit and candidate in that school. So [Sec. Hegseth] is largely making things up here."
"He has outright said that he doesn't believe the women should be in combat roles across the board," Rep. Crow said. "So this is part of his effort to drum women out of important combat specialties and the leadership role within our military, which would make our country less safe and make our military less effective."
Watch the interview with Rep. Crow in the video above.
