Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said during an interview this week that as president controversial transgender policies in the U.S. military would come to a swift end because he wants the military to focus on its job — winning wars.
DeSantis made the remarks during an interview Tuesday evening with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.”
“Well look, in the military, it’s all about the mission first,” he said. “So there’s a whole bunch of reasons why you focus on Mission First. People’s individuality, you do have to check that at the door. And that’s not the only example. There’s a whole host of other examples. So I think the military culture is unique in terms of that.”
“Now, in terms of the larger issue, the question is, what role does someone that’s a man have in women’s activities, even if they conceive themselves to be a woman?” he continued. “I think it’s wrong to have men compete in women’s sports, I understand some of those men conceive of themselves differently. But it’s not fair to the girls who are competing. It’s not fair to the women athletes, the swimmers who lost that national championship, to the Penn swimmer, I mean, they’ve been training too.”
DeSantis also slammed institutions that have forced girls to have to share locker rooms with men who claim to be women.
“What I wouldn’t do is turn society upside down to be able to accommodate, what is a very, very small percentage of the population,” he said.
.@RonDeSantis on transgenderism: "In the military, it's all about the mission first…People's individuality….you do have to check that at the door…What role does someone that's a man have in women's activities?…I thin it's wrong to have men compete in women's sports" pic.twitter.com/gmaAs8yPjK
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 18, 2023
Speaking in South Carolina this week, DeSantis stated, “There was no greater honor than knowing I was wearing the cloth of my country when I served in the military, but our nation’s once-proud fighting force has been infected and paralyzed by a political agenda. It is time to rip the woke out of the military and return it to its core mission. We must restore a sense of confidence, conviction, and patriotic duty to our institutions — and that begins with our military.”
