Secretary of Defense Throws Down With Matt Gaetz Over ‘Wokeism’ in Military: I’m Sorry ‘You’re Embarrassed By Your Country’

Sparks were flying between Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at Tuesday’s House Armed Services hearing where the Florida Republican accused Austin of overseeing a military force that is being overrun by “wokeism.”

Gaetz kicked off his time at the hearing by asking Austin about a speaker invited to the National Defense University named Thomas Piketty. The event was called “Responding to China: The Case for Global Justice and Democratic Socialism” and was held last month. Gaetz claimed the talk promoted “socialism as a strategy to combat China.”

Austin said he was unaware of the event after a long pause and then conceded that he doesn’t “agree with embracing socialism.”

Gaetz accelerated his criticism and honed in on Austin, naming what he described as numerous blown calls by U.S. military leadership, even questioning the current Defense Department budget request of $773 billion.

“You guys have been blowing a lot of calls lately on matters of strategy, Mr. Secretary,” Gaetz said. “You guys told us that Russia couldn’t lose, you told us the Taliban couldn’t immediately win, and so I guess I’m wondering, what in the $773 billion that you’re requesting today is going to help you make assessments that are accurate in the face of so many blown calls?”

“You’ve seen what’s in our budget. You’ve seen how the budget matches the strategy and so I’ll let that speak for itself,” Austin eventually replied. The two men then began a verbal war seeing who could talk the loudest, stepping over each other as Gaetz pressed on with his criticism.

“We’re behind in hypersonics, we failed to deter Russia. Last year, China -” Gaetz said before Austin jumped in, eventually asking how a proper “assessment” of “hypersonics” could be done.

“You’re own people brief us that we are behind and China is winning. Are you aware of the briefings we get on hypersonics?” Gaetz said.

“I’m certainly aware of briefings we give to Congress,” a clearly-frustrated Austin said.

Gaetz continued his “woke” critique, mentioning pronoun training and critical race theory as distractions for the military, to which Austin shot back that the U.S. military is the “most capable” in the world.

“The fact that you’re embarrassed by your country. I’m sorry for that,” Austin told the congressman, which made the exchange even more heated as Gaetz referred to the comment as “disgraceful.”

“I’m embarrassed by your leadership! I’m not embarrassed for my country,” he said, later adding, “that is so disgraceful that you would sit here and conflate your failures with the failures of the uniformed service members.”

The congressman finished up his time by taking another shot at the military’s alleged focus on “wokeism” in the face of failures such as the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan and the current military conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

“You guys said that Russia would overrun Ukraine in 36 days, you said the Taliban would be kept at bay for months, you totally blew those calls and maybe we would be better at them if the National Defense University actually worked a little more on strategy and a little less on wokeism,” he said.