Larry Purdy
To listen to some of the critics of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s September 30, 2025, speech to our military’s senior leadership, it is clear many of these critics willfully ignore or, worse, may have been contributors to the problems Hegseth was addressing. More fundamentally, they misunderstood the breadth of Hegseth’s target audience. As distinguished military historian Victor Davis Hanson observed, Pete Hegseth is “socially [and] culturally . . . trying to associate with the rank-and-file,” i.e., the younger officers and junior enlisted personnel who inevitably will be on the front lines defending our Nation in future conflicts.
Few in today’s military fail to recognize that the Biden administration bequeathed President Trump a U.S. military that (again, to quote Professor Hanson) was “far weaker, suffering from munitions shortages, massive recruitment shortfalls, DEI mandates, and dwindling public confidence.” These destructive outcomes were aided and abetted by far too many senior military personnel who occupied offices in the Pentagon over the past two decades, including several past Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It goes without saying that many of these DEI-obsessed individuals were sitting in the beribboned audience in Quantico on September 30. In fact, it is undeniable that among those present were dozens of senior military personnel who, during the previous Biden administration, had a hand in aggressively promoting DEI and other race and gender-based policies which led directly to the weakened military Trump inherited when he took office in early 2025. In response, President Trump immediately addressed these weaknesses in various Executive Orders. The first, issued on the very first day of the Trump administration, was Executive Order No. 14151. It reads in pertinent part as follows:
Section 1. Purpose and Policy. The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, . . . [including in our] military.
This same Executive Order went on to note that this “shameful discrimination . . . ends today.”
In that context, shortly after Secretary Hegseth was confirmed, he issued a Memorandum addressed to Senior Pentagon Leadership as well as to the Commanders of all the Combatant Commands. Included therein are these simple words:
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