We reported last week on a new Army ad making the rounds that was reminiscent of the bizarre “woke” CIA recruitment video that recently surfaced earlier this month as part of a series aimed at demonstrating how the agency is supposedly committed to diversity and tolerance.

The Army ad featured an animated LGBTQ rights protest and was narrated by an Army corporal who noted she was raised by two moms and had been “defending freedom from a very young age.” She later described how she had gone to local college, where she joined a “sorority full of other strong women.”

Hot on the heels of the CIA’s woke recruitment series, the Army ad horrified people who wondered how America’s enemies would view an ad from the U.S. military that was more suited for an episode of “The View” than it was for its intended purpose (to get viewers to “answer their calling” to join the Army). In response, various videos including the one below began circulating of military recruitment ads from other countries in comparison to ours:

Russian army ad vs US army ad
2021pic.twitter.com/tGQeY3dJa6

— Pardes Seleh (@PardesSeleh) May 19, 2021

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was one of the many shaking their heads after seeing the Army clip compared to the one from Russia, and posted this reaction:

Holy crap.

Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea…. https://t.co/8aVFMW98NM

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 20, 2021

As we reported earlier, Cruz’s tweet triggered the Usual Suspects like “VoteVets,” who laughably accused Cruz of “attacking a U.S. soldier,” saying he “prefers Russians” and was a “sedition-loving traitor.”

Totally rational response, guys. Totally.

Not only was the VoteVets response unintentionally hilarious, but CNN’s Chris Cillizza – who once infamously told us that reporters “don’t root for a side. Period” – became so fauxfended by Cruz’s tweet that he wrote an entire “analysis” (and one that would have made Media Matters and Vox.com proud) of Cruz’s comments where he proceeded to, as VoteVets did, falsely accuse the Texas Senator of attacking a female soldier and asked just what his problem was:

“Is Cruz’s problem that she is a woman? Or that she has two mothers? Or that the ad was animated? (The Army released five similar ads in recent weeks, telling the stories of five people who joined up. All are animated.)”https://t.co/lP5Aav56m7

— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) May 21, 2021

Cruz responded to his critics on the Twitter machine accordingly, pinpointing his exact issue with the military using “woke” ads as recruitment tools:

I’m enjoying lefty blue checkmarks losing their minds over this tweet, dishonestly claiming that I’m “attacking the military.”

Uh, no. We have the greatest military on earth, but Dem politicians & woke media are trying to turn them into pansies.

The new Dem videos are terrible. https://t.co/19pYGa8cYk

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 21, 2021

In my opinion, the debate over the direction of the U.S. military is long overdue. As Bonchie stressed in his write-up, “military strength matters. That’s the entire point of having a military.” Which would a majority of people in this country prefer? A “woke” military or a strong one? And please don’t tell me that it can be both, because that simply does not compute.

Related: Ted Cruz Zings Joy Reid After She Uses Racial Slur and Accuses Him of Being a Race Traitor