Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave his first public address to the Pentagon work force on Friday, spending much of the session defending his efforts to dismantle diversity and inclusion policies.
Mr. Hegseth opened his remarks by saying “all glory to God,” and said that President Trump had asked him not to maintain “the status quo.”
“We’re going to take unconventional approaches,” he said.
Speaking to a room filled with African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and white Americans, both men and women, he offered a full-throated attack on the military’s decades-long efforts to diversify.
“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” said Mr. Hegseth, who served in the U.S. Army National Guard from 2001 to 2021 and is a former Fox News host. He later added that he dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion policies at the Pentagon because they “served a purpose of dividing the force as opposed to uniting the force.”
The U.S. military, which was racially segregated until 1948, has at times made an effort to be more inclusive to women and minorities, though it stood firmly against allowing gay men and women to serve openly until forced to do so in 2011.
The issue of allowing transgender men and women to serve in the military has become a culture war flashpoint. Mr. Trump banned their service during his first administration, and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. reversed that decision, only to have Mr. Trump issue a broad executive order on Jan. 28 that is likely to ban transgender troops from serving once again.
In recent years, the Pentagon has sought to increase the numbers of women and racial minorities in the military’s officer corps, so that it could become more representative of the enlisted force it leads. Mr. Hegseth has said such policies are unfair.
On Friday, Mr. Hegseth touched on some matters of national security, promising “accountability” for “what occurred in Afghanistan” without explaining what that meant. He also pledged the same for the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as well as for “the war that was unleashed in Ukraine,” a military invasion ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
But in his view, Mr. Hegseth told the attendees, military deterrence begins “with our own southern border.”
“It starts with the defense of our homeland,” he said. “I think in some ways, this department over time has felt like that’s somebody else’s mission.”
Shortly after taking office a second time, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that gave the military an explicit role in immigration enforcement and directed the Defense Department to come up with a plan “to seal the borders.”
Thousands of troops have already been sent to the southern border as a result, and more are expected to follow.
Mr. Hegseth said he had visited the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas, near El Paso during a trip to the southern border this past week, noting that as the most senior enlisted soldiers in the service, sergeants major are responsible for maintaining standards among their troops.
“It starts with the basic stuff, right?” Mr. Hegseth said. “It’s grooming standards and uniform standards and training standards, fitness standards, all of that matters.”
As a civilian, he is often seen wearing an American flag pocket square in his suit coat, as he was during his Senate confirmation hearing last month, and sporting a full-color American flag belt buckle, as he did when Vice President JD Vance swore him into office as defense secretary and again onstage at the Pentagon on Friday.
Wearing the American flag as an article of clothing is prohibited by the U.S. Flag Code, which establishes proper and improper ways of respecting the national ensign. The Defense Department’s own website reiterates that in a 2019 article posted during the first Trump administration.
Mr. Hegseth acknowledged his role as the standard-bearer for more than a million active-duty troops and hundreds of thousands of civilian employees at the Defense Department.
“I spent a lot of my career in the military, which is not as much as so many of you, trying to run away from the flagpole as quick as possible,” he said, using a military euphemism for troops avoiding their leaders. “Now, it appears I am the flagpole.”
He promised the audience that he would be “more transparent with the American people and with you.”
As soon as the question-and-answer portion of the event began, the Pentagon cut the video feed.
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