The Save America’s Military Coalition Senate Video Telethon 2.0:
Supporting Pete Hegseth, Opposing Cultural Marxism in the ServicesThursday, Jan 2, 2025
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL VIDEO
Elaine Donnelly
Founder and President of the Center for Military Readiness
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:31:36] Elaine Donnelly: It’s an honor to be part of this distinguished group. I’ll say at the outset I’m speaking only for myself. Certainly not for Pete Hegseth, a longtime friend. I certainly support his nomination. I hope he is quickly confirmed. And my reason I’m going to focus on two issues, in particular, the military personnel issues that he has not flinched or hesitated to discuss [00:32:00] transgenders in the military and women in combat, and what we’ve seen in recent days. An awful lot of misinformation, words stuffed into the mouth of Pete Hegseth, things he never said. So I want to clarify right now, he actually has a very reasonable, moderate approach that I think, based on what I’ve seen and reading his book, that he would pursue. And I would recommend that the administration do this. We have a new article on our website calling. It’s called How to End [00:32:30] Wokeism in the military. And it goes through several issues, including the two that I mentioned. The reason we have transgenders in the military right now is not because of a vote of Congress. Congress never voted on this. A Department of Defense instruction was changed under Barack Obama to include gender identity as a nondiscrimination category, even though the Obama administration, and certainly when the 1993 law was repealed. They kept promising they would never do that, [00:33:00] which of course they did.
[00:33:02] Elaine Donnelly: The transgender policy was extended under Joe Biden. But in between, along came President Trump. And contrary to popular legend, he did not make policy with a tweet or with no study or thought. He set up a panel of experts and the experts looked at the issue. They found very high costs and problematic non deployability issues. They also recommended that people who are [00:33:30] confused about gender identity deserve compassion and the best medical care possible. But gender dysphoria has always been among the categories of psychological conditions that make you ineligible to serve in the military. Now, here’s number one fact that we need to keep straight in everybody’s mind. President Trump did not implement a ban on transgenders in the military. I know you keep hearing that, but that isn’t true at all. It was [00:34:00] a nuanced policy and it said that persons who even if they said they were transgender, but they did not suffer from gender dysphoria for 36 months, they could serve. And those who do suffer from gender dysphoria were deemed not eligible. And it said that people who came out under the Obama administration were allowed to stay in that policy was challenged in court. And guess what? The lawsuits failed. If the administration, the white House, had not changed hands, the [00:34:30] Trump nuanced policy regarding gender dysphoria likely would have been upheld by the Supreme Court.
[00:34:38] Elaine Donnelly: But we all know what happened. Along came Joe Biden, and he made it very clear that if you change a gender marker, it’s a bureaucratic symbol to change your sex assigned at birth. Who does the assigning? They never made that clear. Then other people’s privacy rights, women’s privacy rights would be secondary. [00:35:00] And that access to the private areas of women would be made available to the men. There is no dispute about this. Why have we not heard about problems? Well, it’s very clever. The Biden administration said that there cannot be discussion of problematic issues that occur under the transgender policy, unless it goes to the very highest level in the Pentagon. So we haven’t heard about a lot of these problems. And the first thing the Trump administration should do coming in is [00:35:30] find out, pick up where the first administration left off. How many cases have there been? What are the costs have been what is non deployability been. And then he needs to reconsider whether implementing his previous policy would be a good idea. Congress needs to be involved in some way. Congress could say we will not have biological Males using the private facilities of biological females, we could get rid of the ridiculous pronoun policies.
[00:35:59] Elaine Donnelly: There’s a lot [00:36:00] of things that could be done, but not overnight. This whole idea that all of a sudden, thousands of people claiming to be transgender are going to be kicked out of the military. No, that’s not going to happen. Nobody’s even asking for that. So I think we can count on Pete Hegseth to do the right thing there. And all the side issues such as Pride days, drag queens, those are all minor things compared to the primary issue. If you have a psychological or physical condition that makes you non-deployable, [00:36:30] then you should not be considered eligible to be in the armed forces, and the administration needs to figure out the best way to do that so that it will sustain legal challenge in court, as the previous Trump policy did. Now I want to move quickly to women in combat. This issue has not been heard at a hearing in Congress since the late 1970s, when my presidential commission on which I served spent a full year. Congress didn’t even give. Well, I got five [00:37:00] minutes one day to testify. This issue needs to be examined. Why is the Army Combat Fitness Test showing that when you treat women like men, the injury rates and failure rates are more than double among women than they are among men.
[00:37:17] Elaine Donnelly: No one is questioning the courage of women in the armed forces. The first thing that I’ll leave you with this very primary fact the definition of combat is critically important to understanding this. We have [00:37:30] women serving in harm’s way. They are courageous. Nobody questions their courage. They are not well lately. They are, because the administration changed policy over the objection of the Marine Corps. But direct ground combat means to engage the enemy with deliberate offensive action. Okay. Deliberate offensive. Offensive action. The infantry, special operations forces and the like. Being in danger, in harm’s way. We respect and honor anybody who [00:38:00] serves our country in danger. But women in combat is a topic that is long overdue for examination in all of its component parts, including training physical disparities and getting rid of the gender quotas that really distort everything the promotions and putting people being forced into infantry units. A lot of women have been forced. I’ve I understand we need to get data on this. They don’t want to go in the infantry, but that’s [00:38:30] where they’re being assigned in order to make the Dei quotas. I think Pete Hegseth will do a very good job in looking at all these issues objectively. And this will benefit both men and women in the armed forces.