REPLAY: War Secretary Pete Hegseth Speaks to Reporters in Newport, Rhode Island

A couple of scrapes banged up, but it's going to be just fine. So I pass our gratitude to the team. We'll talk to them later as well. I said it to the audience, and I meant it. You see it. I get to see it firsthand every day on the military side, but on the law enforcement side, what these incredible Americans do. To protect the convoy, to protect American citizens, whatever it is, they don't ask for any accolades. They take risks, put their own life on the line, their own health on the line. So this guy was just doing his job, hit a tough spot. Thank We got support to him right away, but he's going to be well taken care of, thankfully. It just makes me think of, which I think of every day. In this job, the guys out there in the Strait of Hormuz you or down in the WEM, down in, you know, working with our partners, very they're taking risks in places the American people will never know to defend our country and keep our people safe and secure. much. That's what the president has charged me with. Peace through strength means projecting power to ensure that Americans at home are safe and our sovereignty is protected. And I just hope we want to do everything we can to shine a light on the incredible work Americans do all the time. And then today here, thanks for coming to the speech. It was a long time coming. We've been working on senior service college reform for almost. 18 months now, sending some of our best people to all these institutions to understand what works and what doesn't, and to drive the warrior ethos into our service college. Yes, it's about, you know, military academies and it's about basic training, but at every single echelon, we want to be driving a relentless focus on warfighting, deterring conflict and winning it if you have to fight it. It's just a new, there were a lot of bad ideas that made their way into even our military institutions that you heard me talk about. You can't just strip those away. That's not enough. It's rebuild the foundation on a warfighting focus. And so I'm proud of our team for what they put into this. This speech is actually more of a starting gun after doing the evaluation of all the changes that are to come, which are substantial. So at every level, we're putting the War Department back on sound footing, and thank you for coming to see us. I'll take a couple of quick questions. Mr. Secretary, you said your goal was to win wars today. You realigned NATO, got the counter-cartel coalition, 90% of Latin America joined you. Recruiting goals met five months early this year, right? How is that going to stack up against the people who are under efforts to remove you from office? Well, there's a lot of politically motivated people who may have substantial policy disagreements, but their disagreements are with... Success. I mean, what you just described, getting our European partners to step up, it's historic. Getting these countries in Central and South America to come together and do a counter cartel coalition and put the cartels on the run is historic. The alliances we're building out in the Pacific, completely historic. The way the things that we've accomplished through Midnight Hammer and Absolute Resolve and Southern Spear and Epic Fury are things that will change the face of the globe for generations. We are very proud of the President's America First agenda, of our peace through strength posture. We know the world is a better and safer place as a result. And so if we want to litigate that, the success of those things, I'm happy to do it all day long. I couldn't be more proud. Of what our president has done, the decisions that he's made, the courageous calls that he's made, the bold nature of our leadership, military leadership, the skill and courage of the troops on the ground. So if you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or Navand Nicolas Maduro, you're taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic. Everybody in the military knows that. Anybody paying attention knows that. These are the kind of partisan political games. Democrats have been playing for a very long time against the president. Yes. They believe the top reason the GOP lost midterms was because of the Iran war. What's your reaction to that tweet, and did you talk to the vice president about it? Well, I appreciate the vice president very much, and I'm not going to get in the middle of a finger-pointing exercise. He's been an incredibly substantive member of the team from the very beginning. We all give earnest feedback on everything, and ultimately, when the president says he'd do it again, I agree. Great. This was a, it doesn't have to be. Necessarily popular, but it can be necessary, and that's, I think, where I land on that. Someone had to confront the Iranian regime's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. And for 47 years, no president was willing to do it. And then President Trump stood up and said, not on my watch. And it's going to be difficult because they're building a conventional missile shield, the likes of which the world hasn't seen. They were pursuing the North Korea strategy, build up so many capabilities that you can't stop us from getting a nuclear weapon. And as the president points out so clearly, you can't let crazy Islamists. Have a nuclear bomb. And so the choice was don't act and wish it away or take a bold move, which the president did with Midnight Hammer, which we've done with Epic Fury. And I think it was the right step. History will judge him very kindly. And the military delivered. Indeed. Real quick. Republicans support his defeat in impeachment articles. Oh, we're not worried about that. I'll tell you this. Actually. I hope all of you will join us. We're going to do a press conference tomorrow morning at the Pentagon on that very topic. So I'll save my remarks there. I hope you'll all come loaded for bear with your questions. I wonder if it's going to happen for the war to officially be over. And then just really quickly, is there anything Republicans need to accomplish for you and for the Department of War before Democrats take over? Well, Iran is devastated. Iran is in the weakest position it's been in a very, very long time. The president has the upper hand on any path that he chooses to take, to include saying, hey, we're done and we're going to watch your nuclear material and you better not move it. Whatever he wants to do, it's his prerogative, and the War Department is prepared to give him the tools to execute on that. What was your second question? What is the War Department before Democrats come up and take over? Well, I think that's maybe your question on funding as well. The funding our department needs is the most important component of the next two months. And my call to Republicans is let's come together through a reconciliation bill to fund President Trump's War Department with a historic generational investment that I'm sure you heard me talk today about subsea to space. We need to have dominance at every echelon. And that reconciliation bill from superintelligence to space to Iron Dome, you could. From munitions to shipbuilding, you name it, it's going to ensure that our department not just stays toe-to-toe, but dominates into the future, which is what the president expects. So my team, we're not worried about the noise, which is what I told the troops, too. Don't worry about the noise. There's partisan noise all over our town. We're focused on delivering the president's agenda, which is the kind of funding our department needs in order to dominate the future, which we'll deliver. So we'll see you tomorrow morning at the Pentagon. How about that? Thank you very much.