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Pete Hegseth: “The Communist Chinese are rapidly trying to build a military…”

Featuring: Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense | National

Pete Hegseth Speaks Out, On Media Smears, Responding to Accusations, and How He'd Reform Military

Published December 4, 2024 | Video Starts at 1:03:31

The reality of the outcome in Ukraine, Donald Trump's been very clear about that, but that he wants to end it right away and that ultimately there's this huge looming threat in the Indo Pacific, in The Communist Chinese are rapidly trying to build a military that outpaces ours. Building military, trying to defeat us. So I don't want to get ahead of the president at all on any of this. (1:03:31–1:03:51)

CLAIM

Asserts that China is rapidly building a military to surpass the U.S.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Pete Hegseth

“I was. You were the by far, always the most reliable member of our team. For every moment I was there, you were there every morning on time…”
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“If you wanted another general or another admiral or an executive or a CEO or a politician or a lawyer to run the Defense Department, we've…”
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“I want lethality, lethality, lethality. I want readiness, accountability standards, war fighting.”
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“Clean house of the woke crap. All that stuff, all the, the climate stuff and the CRT and the DEI and the genderism and the get rid of it.”
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“Let's bring the Pentagon back to the people, the people's Pentagon for war fighters.”
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“The advise and consent process is a real thing.”
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“Fox... identified it as anonymous and salacious and ridiculous at the time.”
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“That's their playbook. Get ready for more. And they're going to make it up just like they have so far.”
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“All anonymous, all innuendo, all rumor, nothing sourced, no verification.”
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“You're a threat to their system. You're a threat to all the things in Washington, D.C. the swamp.”
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“What you're seeing right now with me is the art of the smear.”
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“They never asked the people who were involved directly.”
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“Usually from disgruntled people who were fired for cause, who are jealous or want a little bit of retribution.”
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“I've never had a drinking problem.”
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“We’ve got an epidemic of [depression and suicide] in our country.”
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“I'm also the right guy to be in the Pentagon to understand what our young water fighters are going through.”
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“Are we wiping away the garbage of political correct social justice nonsense and focusing just on lethality and meritocracy?”
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“Men and women like that are going to fight future wars, that Donald Trump's going to have to make a decision about whether we enter or not.”
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“I've been honest about that encounter, starting with law enforcement.”
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“They looked into it and said, no way. We're not charging on this at all.”
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“The military hasn't been sufficiently addressed, what some women in the military go through.”
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“All of those allegations are anonymous. All of them are unsubstantiated.”
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“The idea that it was constantly being carried up anywhere is patently false.”
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“NBC is going to do is make up anonymous sources, none of which are close to me, none of which know me, claiming that I had a drinking…”
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“I'm not going to have a drink at all [while serving as Secretary of Defense].”
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“It's not true [that Vets for Freedom wound up in enormous debt and couldn't pay its creditors].”
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“We paid it all off and we squared it away [regarding the debt of Vets for Freedom].”
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“There was zero impropriety [in the financial management of Vets for Freedom].”
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“There's not a single vets group in the country that accomplished more in a smaller amount of time than [Concerned Veterans for America] did.”
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“The Veterans Accountability act and the Choice act for vets, we were the intellectual Harbin. We started that movement.”
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“Donald Trump took [the Veterans Accountability Act and the Choice Act] and ran with it.”
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“I was not fired. I was not pushed out. There were no allegations of impropriety.”
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“The word whistleblower gets used... What that means is a disgruntled email to someone saying, I don't like this person.”
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“The email was forwarded to every single executive and host at Fox News Channel.”
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“Jane Mayer and all these Gabe Sherman and all these trash artists, they're not members of the media. They're leftists with keyboards.”
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“They're agenda drivers whose whole job is to try to destroy anyone who supports Donald Trump.”
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“If you're this young nominee for the secretary of defense who's going to try to do big things on behalf of the war fighter and take on an…”
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“It's not reporting, it's not real, it's fake.”
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“For far too long, conservatives, Republicans, Trump supporters... have to learn to fight through, like, the chaos and the violence of the…”
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“It is an arsenal of lies they mobilize to destroy.”
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“I've had senators look me in the eye, friends. Great. Said they're trying to kill you.”
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“I pray that he gives me the opportunity to serve my country as the Secretary of Defense.”
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“Women are already in common Combat female engagement teams, fighter pilots, you know, eod, military police.”
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“The military has been distracted from its core mission, which is lethality.”
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“Systemic racism is not a problem in our military today.”
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“The percentage of racism and extremism in our military is a fraction of what it is in the general public.”
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“Ultimately, we live in one of the most dangerous times since the end of the Cold War.”
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“You would have to be a fool to look at the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan and think that what we got out of them was beneficial to…”
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