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
Ken Abramowitz
Founder, Save the West; Managing General Partner and co-founder of NGN Capital, a $450 million worldwide healthcare venture capital fund.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:45:33] Ken Abramowitz: Thank you very much, Frank. It’s great to be one of your students for the past 20 years, but for the next five minutes, I’ll be a professor, so to speak. And so I wanted to mention several things that might help everybody understand the mess that the Department of Defense is in. First, just to preface, the Trump campaign to become [00:46:00] president was not 95% domestic oriented, and it was 5% foreign oriented. President Trump is not going to be happy about this, but that his first 100 days are going to end up being 50 over 50 between the, you know, there’s an old expression, enemies have a vote. And so even though he wants to implement the domestic policy orientation, which he will [00:46:30] he’ll be encumbered by war whether he wants to or not. So let me go through seven issues quickly in my five minutes or for 4.5 minutes. Number one, he has three grave short term issues. And the president has these issues. But the secretary of Defense, by definition, has these issues too. We have to settle the Russian Ukraine dispute if it’s settleable. Number two, we [00:47:00] have to intimidate China so we don’t get into a direct shooting war, which we’re not prepared for right now. And number three, we have to fight Iran until regime change and destroy their Houthi friends in Yemen. So a lot of bombs are going to blow up in the first three months of the Trump administration.
[00:47:20] Ken Abramowitz: Whether we want to be at war or not, we’re in war by definition. Because if your enemies are in a war with you, then you’re in a state of war. Number two, there’s [00:47:30] a lot of short term distractions. For example, Syria. Can we stabilize it? Can we protect the 2.5 million Kurds? The 250,000 Jews, the 500,000 Christians, and the 12 million people living in Jordan? Can we just watch the Muslims in Nigeria kill the Christians in Nigeria? Roughly 10,000 a year. And can we [00:48:00] watch the menace of Venezuela and do nothing about it? Number three the Secretary of Defense has to, as we just discussed, has to fix the military culture. Move it back to meritocracy. Fix the recruitment mess and compensate the victims of the communists who took temporarily. Took over the Department of Defense. Number four, the Department of Secretary of Defense is going to have to advocate to 10% [00:48:30] annual growth in the military budget, not 4%. It has to start off with an immediate $25 billion to purchase weapons between Israel and Ukraine. We’re blowing up more weapons than we’re producing. Well, you can’t allow that situation to exist very long. Number five, the Secretary of Defense has got a plan for five for three front war. In other words, we have to be ready to fight Russia, Iran and China simultaneously. [00:49:00] Not a two front war, not a one and a half front war.
[00:49:04] Ken Abramowitz: Three front war. Number six. He’s got to fix the Navy. We produce something like one ship a year or a net ship a year in the Chinese fight. You can’t allow that. He’s got to fix the industrial base. We have to learn how to produce ships at a much faster pace. And number seven, it’s probably going to have to set up a new cyber force just as President Trump set up a Space Force. So [00:49:30] let me conclude in less than a minute on the key characteristics of a defense minister or secretary of defense who can accomplish can fix this mess. And so we need three qualities and we need more. But just to make it simple, someone has to be passionate. Obviously, someone has to be knowledgeable. Obviously, someone has to be convincing. By the way, convincing to Americans, convincing to our enemies, convincing to our enemies, and convincing to [00:50:00] our allies. And I can’t think of a better candidate than what the president selected in terms of Pete Hegseth. So I think he’s a wonderful, wonderful choice, and I look forward for him to take over the helm. And when he starts, he’s going to say, you know, oh my God, what did I get myself into? But he he’ll I’m sure he’ll rise to the occasion and be a great Secretary of Defense.