We’re used to seeing how deceitful and dishonest the Biden-Harris HQ X account is when it comes to taking former and potentially future President Donald Trump’s comments out of context to lie and mislead on issues such as immigration and abortion. On Sunday, however, the account posted a clip of Trump from his interview with “Fox & Friends Weekend” in which he says he’ll “fire” woke generals, and it actually looks to have helped Trump. The interview took place on Saturday, just a couple of days after Trump was found “guilty” on 34 felony charges in a hush money “trial,” and the same day he received roaring applause when he went to the UFC fight.
Towards the end of the interview, and just a few moments before the 15-second clip from the Biden HQ, Trump was promoting how he “rebuilt the military.” He went on to discuss how “there’s woke at the top,” with co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy chiming in to ask “are you going to fire those woke generals, the woke generals at the top,” noting “Pete’s been talking about it,” referring to co-host Pete Hegseth.
“Yes, I would get rid of them, yeah,” Trump confirmed, explaining now he knows who they actually are, unlike when he first came into office. “But see, now I know ’em, I didn’t know ’em before. You know, I came in, what do I know, I was a New York real estate person,” he reminded. “But no, I’d fire ’em, I would fire them,” Trump continued, making clear “you can’t have a woke military.”
Conveniently, the clip ended before Trump brought the conversation back to points made earlier, about how “you need people that want to win, they want to win wars,” as he reminded “that’s what their purpose is, to win wars, not to be woke!”
A woke military has caused considerable problems for the military. Recruitment and morale are down, and we’re facing multiple international crises during President Joe Biden’s time in office. In November 2022, as Spencer covered at the time, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) released a report on “Woke Warfighters.” There have since been thousands of replies and quoted reposts since then of users using the clip as an example to celebrate Trump, including Hegseth himself.
The interview was close to an hour and a half long, and these clipped comments came in the final minutes. It really is surprising that the Biden HQ account would clip this. It doesn’t make Trump look bad to say “you can’t have woke military,” context or no context.
There were other parts of the interview when Trump discussed the military, for instance when he said early on “our military is so great,” clarifying that he meant “the real generals, the guys who know how to fight,” as he then went on to lament the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan as “one of the lowest points in the history of our country.”
At still another point towards the end, co-host Pete Hegseth mentioned a question from the mother of two Army officers, who wanted to know what Trump would do to “rebuild our military,” with Hegseth adding a question about how Trump would “rip out the woke stuff that’s happening,” with Trump murmuring in agreement about that being a problem. Hegseth called to mind how as “all the vets and service members see,” it’s “embedded in our Pentagon right now.” Trump praised Hegseth’s experience and knowledge–the co-host is in fact an Army veteran–and even pointed out he’d “put [Hegseth] in charge” and has thought of hiring him at the Department of Defense or Veteran Affairs, though his co-hosts joked they’d miss him too much at Fox.
The Biden HQ also conveniently left out mention during the interview of how it was discussed that Hegseth encouraged Trump to improve the lives of veterans, something Trump warned “now, what they’re doing is ending that.”
Hegseth’s book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” was released just a few days after the Saturday interview. Townhall received a sneak peak last week ahead of the release, and much of the book touches upon not just Hegseth’s military experiences, but how the military is being negatively impacted by an emphasis on woke priorities under the Obama and Biden administrations, as well as how good soldiers are being forced out by being labeled “extremists,” as Hegseth was.
