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
Vice Admiral Dean Lee
USCG (Ret.); Retired in 2016 following a distinguished 35-year career in the U.S. Coast Guard, rising to the rank of vice admiral as commander of Coast Guard Atlantic Area, overseeing a force of 21,000 active-duty personnel conducting all Coast Guard missions from the Rocky Mountains to the Arabian Gulf, spanning across 40 states, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean; Honorary Professor of Military Science at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia
TRANSCRIPT:
[01:40:47] Dean Lee: Well, hey, thank you for having me. Hey, look, there’s not a whole lot that I can add that hasn’t already been said by all of the good people that have spoken before me, so I’ll try to be brief. I’ve been [01:41:00] for the last eight years. Since I retired, I’ve been privileged to be a senior fellow with the Joint Forces Staff College down in Norfolk, where I, from time to time, am able to give lectures on ethics. And one of the things that I talked to with the students is the issue of trust. How important is it? And, and the point that I make with them is, look, you guys are, are, are the most trusted institution in the United States, according to the Gallup pollsters, [01:41:30] for the last 2 or 3 decades. I mean, and you need to be proud of that, but the burden is on your shoulders now because that trust is slipping precipitously. For the past 4 or 5 years, ever since we’ve had that hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. You add that to the vaccine virus mandate, and the troops and the American public have noticeably lost trust in that most important institution. [01:42:00] Now, I have never actually met Pete Hegseth, but I’ve read his book. But I have met Matthew Lohmeier and have read his book twice. And I can tell you that as an old 70 year old veteran, I couldn’t be more inspired by than I am with the way those two men, those two bright patriots, those two veterans, think they’ve outlined a plan to get us back on track and restore [01:42:30] that trust. A couple of weeks ago, I read an article. I chuckled about it because apparently the Good Idea fairy has recently visited the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And told them that they will henceforth have an alternative way to spell woman or women instead of w o m e n. It’s now w o m y n I chuckle about it, but [01:43:00] then two weeks later, I get a call from a respected friend of mine who’s a member of the US maritime industry, and he was complaining because my former organization just issued an edict, a new rule, which goes into effect on January 17th, that says that now every one of the all the entire US maritime industry has [01:43:30] now got to change all words that end with the suffix m a n to something else.
[01:43:37] Dean Lee: All right. For, for example, a seaman will henceforth be called a seafarer. A fireman will become a boiler technician, and my personal favorite, a steersman will become an apprentice mate of towing vessels. I mean, why? Why use one word when five will do. And so you look at that kind of stuff and you go, that’s just [01:44:00] stupid. And you ask yourself, where is this stupidity going to end? Well, that’s why I’m placing my hope and trust in in Pete Hegseth, because the outlines in his book that he’s got a plan to end that kind of stupid stuff. And I’m hoping that he will team up with Matthew Lamar and the two of them collectively can build a bigger team to tackle that stuff. And so it begs the question, how do we get here? I mean, how do we get to a point that we’re focusing on that kind [01:44:30] of silliness that, you know, we have forgotten, in my case with my agency, that when we make when we do small things like that makes us feel better. Like eradicate man from sophistic suffixes that we’re. We’re not just. This is no small deal. We’ve forgotten that the industry that we’re regulating is already overwhelmed with a litany of complex safety regulations, environmental regulations, [01:45:00] and other government imposed security requirements that that are all burdensome enough.
[01:45:05] Dean Lee: So why on earth would we add the silliness to them that have to reprint all their training manuals, change all their signs, change all their certificates, all just to eradicate the letters m a n. This goes to the heart and core of this Di silliness. And so I would just say this. We [01:45:30] need to get men and women into leadership positions in DoD senior level to kill this kind of stupidity. We just need to kill the stupid stuff. And number two, we need somebody to mandate that we’re going to finally do a hot wash on that whole vaccine mandate rollout for DoD, because that extended over into DHS, and by virtue of that, into the US Coast Guard. And we lost the trust [01:46:00] of thousands. And we also lost due to discharge, thousands of good men and women in a time when we need people to fill those positions and we can’t find enough to recruit. So to sum it all up, I hope that Pete Hegseth gets confirmed and that he will create some kind of operation to restore purpose, to restore trust to the military, and [01:46:30] to bring back and bring us back to into focus on what’s really the most important thing in the US military is an institution, and that is lethality and morality. And when you get those two together, we will regain the lost trust. Thank you for letting me come over.