America’s propaganda press have wound up with egg on their faces a few many times over the past several years. And that could not be truer than when it comes to the military recruitment crisis that helped define Joe Biden’s failed presidency.
On Monday, the Associated Press published a report revealing that the U.S. Marine Corps has reached its recruiting targets for the 2025 fiscal year. The achievement follows in the footsteps of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, all of which hit their FY2025 goals months ahead of schedule.
Naturally, the AP’s Konstantin Toropin seemingly did everything he could to downplay the Trump administration’s turnaround of the Biden-era recruiting crisis, pinning blame for the disaster on “complications from the COVID-19 pandemic, tight job markets and a growing generation of young Americans struggling to meet fitness and academic standards.” While noting how “the uptick [in recruitment] began well before President Donald Trump won office again in November,” he also “conveniently” omitted the fact that several of the branches axed traditional standards recruits were expected to meet to qualify for service under Biden.
It’s not hard to see why the AP and other media outlets are so eager to make excuses for the befuddled ex-president and his team’s failure to bring in qualified talent to the military. To do so would force them to admit that U.S. leadership does, in fact, matter to those seeking to serve their nation in uniform.
For four years under Biden, lethality and efficiency were traded in for so-called “diversity” and “inclusion.” Left-wing military leadership directed their sights on targeting what they made out to be “extremism” in the force (aka mainstream conservative beliefs), while America’s real adversaries were allowed to expand their geopolitical footprints virtually unchallenged.
From the very beginning, the Biden Pentagon’s message to patriotic Americans was clear: You’re not welcome here.
Contrast that despotic vision with the one painted by Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth in their remarks to U.S. generals and other high-ranking officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Tuesday. Both leaders made it unequivocally clear that the military’s past embrace of failed leftist dogma is a thing of the past and that the No. 1 priority for the service moving forward will be winning wars.
“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that sh-t,” Hegseth said.
As hard as leftists may find it to believe, young men don’t want to join a military whose commander-in-chief pushes racist DEI ideology, fires them for not taking an experimental shot, and keeps checking his watch as the bodies of their brothers and sisters in arms arrive home in flag-draped coffins — a tragedy which Biden himself is responsible for. They want leaders who love America as much as they do and will stand with them when their backs are against the wall.
That’s why the military is experiencing the surge in recruitment it’s witnessing today. Not because Covid is over or the services suddenly discovered some magic potion to make recruits fit and smart; but because for the first time in a long time they have leaders who actually give a damn about the mission and their well-being.
And there is no amount of media spin that is going to change that.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
