Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is going on the offensive after left-wing attempts to force him out of his position failed over the last several months. Speaking with Fox News, he blasted the mainstream press for a lack of focus on what really matters, as military recruitment hits its highest levels in years. 

"Bring it on!" 🔥@SecDef Pete Hegseth just blasted the press for the negative coverage of him — & revealed that the men and women of the military have his back.

"Forget the press! The notes I get from privates, and from captains, and from new recruits — THAT'S what fuels us!" pic.twitter.com/c4PbapZjiT

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 19, 2025

HOST: 100 percent of the coverage on you from the mainstream record has been negative. 

HEGSETH: That's a record. I mean, I should get a medal for that. You know what I attribute it to? They're going after President Trump, just like they did from the minute he came down the escalator in his first term, and now, they want to tear him down, his agenda down, and his voters down. Because I support him fully, and I'm willing to be strong and bold in that proclamation, they're gonna come at me in any way possible. To that I say, bring it on. To that, I say, it's not going to deter me. It only fuels what we're doing at the Pentagon on behalf of the warfighter, on behalf of the commander-in-chief, on behalf of restoring it back to basics and lethality. 

The notes I get, forget the press, the notes I get from privates and from captains and from new recruits, that's what fuels us. They're like, thank goodness President Trump showed up, and you showed up, and restored it to what we always wanted it to be. We're back to training. we're back to basic standards. I can be a commander again. I can focus on the enemy. That was not the case. We had our troops being called extremists, or being forced to take an experimental vaccine, or being judged by the color of their skin, or their gender. That's not the focus anymore.

Lost amid all the freak-out over "signalgate" and the constant drumbeat of hit pieces targeting Hegseth has been what the actual rank-and-file of America's military thinks. To this point, there's every indication they are supportive of the changes being made. That includes rooting out discriminatory and recruitment-killing DEI initiatives that remove meritocracy from promotions to fill certain quotas. When it comes to the military, diversity is not our strength. Conformity to high standards is, and the color of someone's skin or their gender should play any role in that. 

Under the Biden administration, the military was turned into yet another left-wing social experiment, and the results were disastrous, with recruitment targets being missed and readiness suffering. Meanwhile, commanders seemed to be chosen more for their political views then their track records of winning wars. That led to a severe collapse in morale among service members.

SEE: Army Recruitment of White Soldiers Plummets, Take a Wild Guess Why

That problem is a thing of the past. With Hegseth now in charge, the U.S. Army, for example, is set to smash recruitment goals for fiscal year 2025. As of mid-April, 51,837 new enlistments had occurred. That's a staggering 85 percent of the 60,000 goal met with five months still left. Other branches are seeing similar surges. 

Putting a cap on that optimism has been the recent success of the bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels. The terrorist group backed down and sued for peace, pledging to allow safe passage of vessels to the Suez Canal. That's in sharp contrast to the Biden years, when the Houthis seized and attacked ships with impunity, bringing commercial trade to a halt in the region. 

So ask yourself, what matters more? Arguments over some cellphone app containing information that didn't even matter in the end, or sky-high recruitment and winning engagements again? The press can keep their petty attacks up, but they only look smaller the more the successes pile up.

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