During Thursday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing, Rep. Derrick Van Order (R-WI) questioned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about Democrats' rhetoric about his record.
00:03Mr. Secretary, did you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States?
00:07Yes, I did.
00:08General, did you?
00:10Yes, I did, sir.
00:11Well, let's delve into that document.
00:14Article 2, Section 2, the President shall be the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and the Militia of the several states.
00:19So when people are listening to the Commander-in-Chief, they are actually fulfilling their constitutional duty that they took an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution.
00:30And what these folks are saying is absolutely shameful because when they are calling you incompetent, Mr. Secretary, guess who's listening?
00:39Our enemies, the people that are plotting as we sit in this comfortable room in an air-conditioned, beautiful space.
00:46They are plotting the deaths of us, Americans.
00:51And it is shameful, and I wish my colleagues would come back in here and apologize to you personally.
00:56Let's cover a couple other things here.
00:58When someone has gender dysphoria and they decide to mutilate their genitals and they're taking cross-sex hormones, they're out of pocket for about three years.
01:06How many countries is the DOD involved in right now?
01:10What?
01:1150, 60, 80, 100, whatever it is, right?
01:13Okay, someone is going to get on a plane and leave their family and potentially leave their wife a widow or their husband a widower because somebody has decided to self-actualize.
01:27We're going to go forward and we're going to complete the mission because that's what we do.
01:32And a lot of my colleagues simply don't understand that or they're trying to ignore it.
01:37Clear up a couple things.
01:38The former chief of naval operations was incompetent and gave the Red Sea to the Houthis.
01:43The former chairman of the chiefs of staff let so much DEI garbage fly around they almost destroyed the military.
01:49That's why they got fired.
01:52Okay, as far as standards.
01:54The standard is the minimum.
01:57That is the minimum level of performance that someone will reach or they're not qualified for the job.
02:03Now, the NFL does not have a standard for females.
02:08If you're a lady and you want to join the NFL, go try out for the team.
02:11How many women play in the NFL?
02:12Anybody?
02:13The answer is zero.
02:14Why is there an NBA and a WNBA?
02:17Why?
02:18Because they acknowledge biology.
02:21So we can have as many whiz-bang, high-tech things available, but at the end of the day, to win a war, you need someone to go in a room and beat someone to death with their hands.
02:33That's a fact.
02:37And all this other stuff is meaningless.
02:39The Chinese Communist Party does not care what your pronouns are.
02:44They care if they know we will be able to destroy them, crush them, and grind them into dust if they mess with the United States of America.
02:54Mr. Secretary, there's five soft truths.
02:56The first one is that people are more important than hardware.
03:01Do you concur?
03:02I would concur with that and all of your previous statements.
03:06Thank you, sir.
03:06General, do you concur that humans are more important than hardware?
03:10I do, along with the other soft truths.
03:13All right.
03:14Well, good on you.
03:14So here's an issue that I'm having right now.
03:20It doesn't matter how great our people are if they're not upholding this oath and understanding that the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is the Commander-in-Chief, and that you are the Secretary of Defense, and that you are the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
03:33And we've had a rash of incidents around bases that can only be described as insubordination.
03:39Insubordination, taking down the President's portrait, turning ears around, turning the Vice President's pictures around, removing them from stations, covering them with flags.
03:51That's insubordination.
03:52And insubordination is a crime, according to the United States UCMJ, Uniform Code of Military Justice.
04:01So what I just need to hear from you, Mr. Secretary, and I commend you for your performance or what you did for Fort McCoy in my district.
04:09I need to hear from you that you are actively trying to find the people that are subverting the chain of command, and then we will deal with them in the appropriate manner.
04:19Every place where we find incidents like that or others, they're immediately addressed.
04:24General Cain, do you think it would be a political act for someone to be held accountable for insubordination?
04:31If you did that as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, holding soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardians?
04:36Well, Congressman, of course, you have to have the context around that, so I'd want to know more information, sir.
04:45Okay.
04:45I want to commend you for your performance today and your restraint by not lashing out at some of the most disgraceful comments I have ever heard in my short tenure in Congress.
