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Pete Hegseth: “We don't want to fight wars. We want to deter them.”

Featuring: Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense | National

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Pete Hegseth sworn in as Secretary of Defense

Published | Video Starts at 04:28

And the three principles I talked about are what we will bring to that Pentagon. Restore the warrior ethos in everything that we do, rebuild our military and re establish deterrence. We don't want to fight wars. We want to deter them. as you said, and we want to end them responsibly. But if we need to fight them, we're going to bring overwhelming and decisive force to close with and destroy the enemy and bring our boys home. (04:28–04:31)

CLAIM

Asserts a preference for deterring wars rather than engaging in them.

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PolitiQuote is a civic library index to statements made by politicians in publicly available video records. The index is created automatically from transcripts, with no editorial oversight or analysis. Highlighted quotes are selected by AI. Words may be added in parentheses to offer context for the quote. There may be errors in the transcription and display, so listen to the video to ensure accuracy.

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