Pat Harrigan Chides Democrats For Showing 'Flagrant Disrespect' Towards Secretary Pete  Hegseth During Hearing - video Dailymotion

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During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) accused Democrats of being disrespectful to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Transcript

00:00We will yield. The gentleman yields back. His time has expired. We will now go to another North

00:05Carolinian, Mr. Harrigan, for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Secretary Hegseth and

00:11Chairman Cain. Thank you all for your testimony today. I'd like to first identify with my

00:17colleagues' comments from Wisconsin, but I'd like to take it a step further. I think you all are

00:23owed an apology. And although I really wish that all of my Democratic colleagues' comments

00:29were of the nature of my colleague from North Carolina just a minute ago, that is not what

00:34happened today. And all we saw was flagrant disrespect towards both of you. And that's

00:41not what this committee is about. We should be able to disagree without showing disrespect.

00:47We should be able to have discourse without sowing discord. And we should be able to question

00:55without using words that you can't take back. And that's not what happened today from the

01:01other side of this committee. We need to do a lot better than this. But I will say, gentlemen,

01:06that you handled those questions with humility and grace. And today, many of my Democratic colleagues

01:13have struck out. And it's the second day in a row that many of my Democratic colleagues

01:18have struck out. So with that, I've got a couple of questions for you today. Mr. Secretary,

01:27I want to talk about Army Transformation Initiative. I want to thank you for the bold work that

01:33you have done to reshape our nation's Army, purging our Department of Defense and our Army of

01:42legacy weapons systems, force structures, and contracting mechanisms that have not helped

01:47us win the last 30 years of war are not relevant to helping us deter or defeat China is something

01:54that this country desperately needed. It's something that American taxpayers desperately needed. It's

01:59something that our servicemen and servicewomen have desperately needed. What is your plan to iterate

02:06the Army Transformation Initiative across both our Navy and our Air Forces?

02:12It's a great point. I want to first compliment Army Chief General George, as well as Army Secretary

02:19Driscoll, for their initiative out the gate to not waste any time in recognizing precisely what you said,

02:26that we need an Army structured and prepared to fight the wars of the future. We owe it to the service,

02:30we owe to the American people. And they followed in large part a Marine Corps that led the way overall

02:35in those, as sometimes they do, often. But I recognize other services, the Navy and the Air Force

02:44could do more in that regard as well. Different ships, you might say, to steer than an Army and how you

02:51effectuate that modernization or that shift. We think the hard choices we're making in platforms and

02:57capabilities in those services mirror the kind of hard choices we're making in the Army. And that's

03:03what we see as our job. In this moment right now, considering the threats we face, the world we live

03:08in, I'm going to spend the capital I have to be happy to take the arrows of constituencies or

03:16districts and say, no, we're going to put forward what's best for the Army or the Marine Corps or the

03:21Navy or the Air Force and we're going to make the tough calls. And that might create some consternation

03:25and that's okay. But our job is to ensure our budget matches those capabilities. Army transformation is

03:30a great example and we're going to look for it in other services too. I very much look forward to

03:34seeing what you'll have the Navy and the Air Force do and we'll be behind you 100 percent of the way.

03:39And Chairman Cain, a lot of talk today about the Golden Dome. I don't really fully appreciate some of

03:46my Democratic colleagues not knowing what that's about or knowing the threats behind why we have to have

03:51the Golden Dome, but I also believe that we have to have mini domes all across our country. As we've

03:58seen, we've had very low cost, high impact technology proliferate all around the world. And I think we

04:05need to look no further than what happened in Ukraine just two weeks ago where you had a $100,000

04:11investment by the Ukrainian scuttle over $7 billion worth of hardware by the Russians. I think that we have to

04:18look forward into the future and anticipate that we may face the exact same threats, maybe not against our

04:24military, but against our infrastructure, against our stadiums, against our city centers, and we need mini domes

04:30to protect this country against those threats. How are you all working that problem set?

04:38Well, sir, first, thanks for the question. Thanks for your service.

04:42You know, one of the things that we're learning is the nature and way we fight wars is changing.

04:48We're starting to face, as you're alluding to, problems of mass where numbers of exchanges,

04:54kinetic exchanges, and frankly, non-kinetic in the cyber domain are increasing exponentially. So

05:01we have to match networks with networks and mass with mass. And so as we move forward to create the

05:08force of the future that's on our radar.

Pat Harrigan Chides Democrats For Showing 'Flagrant Disrespect' Towards Secretary Pete Hegseth During Hearing

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