Presumably, even Morning Joe's fierce feminist warriors wouldn't have ordered female soldiers to storm the beaches and scale the cliffs of Normandy on D-Day.
But that didn't stop today's panel from hammering Pete Hegseth for his views on women in the military. Retired Admiral James Stavridis, Joe Scarborough, and "MSNBC Republican" Elise Jordan misrepresented Hegseth's position. They suggested that he opposes allowing women in the military, full stop. That's entirely false.
In his very first statements on the subject as Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Hegseth praised the important role that women play in the military.
But Hegseth draws the line at women in direct combat. As he put it in during a recent podcast:
“I’m not talking about pilots. I’m talking about physical, labor-intensive type jobs. Seals, Rangers, Green Berets, MARSOC, infantry battalions, armor, artillery.”
For holding those views, Jordan branded Hegseth a "retrogade throwback."
And when an agitated Joe Scarborough screamed that Hegseth would be taking us back not to the 1950s, but to "the 11th century," Jordan specified, "to the Crusades!"
Opposing people using the military for woke crusades and "gender-affirming" surgeries makes you so "11th century." All the Pentagon wokeness is surely seen as the Right Side of History.
Hegseth's qualifications to run the Department of Defense's enormous bureaucracy and responsibilities can be debated. But those condemning his concerns about putting women in direct, physical, combat are elevating woke ideology over the harsh realities of war.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
12/16/24
6:19 am EDTJAMES STAVRIDIS: It's the policy questions. I agree with your assessment of all that. I want to add one that didn't come out vividly there, and it's his comments about women. Women in combat, women in the Armed Forces. He's trying to kind of walk back from that.
But the gist of his commentary thus far has been women are not additive to the mission of the Department of Defense. Look, I commanded thousands of women in combat starting in 1993 when I was captain of a destroyer with a crew that had both men and women.
I've commanded women in carrier strike groups under my command in Afghanistan and U.S. Southern Command. Women at the Naval Academy. We talked about the Army-Navy game, there are 22 guys on the field. There are 8,000 people in the stands from Annapolis and West Point. One-third of them are women. So, that basket of policy issues, both the ones you describe, and I want to hear from him, full-throated support for women in combat in the military, because that's the reality.
You can't man 100% of the force with 50% of the population. That's a recruiting challenge no one will overtake.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, and Elise Jordan, when I find it hard to believe that Jodi Ernst, who understands about women in combat, who understands about sexual abuse, who understands all the things that she understands. There's never been [bangs the table] a nominee more lined up for her to vote against. Is she really going to fold on all of her principles, on everything she has fought for on the Armed Services Committee regarding the protection of women in and out of uniform, because a couple of ads are run against her?
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: And what can he say now? What could he say that would unsay --
ELISE JORDAN: There's nothing that he can do to unsay what he has said. 16% of the US military: women. I have embedded with female Marines in Helmand [province in Afghanistan] who have been under fire. Women in combat, they handle it just fine. They handle it just as fine as the men.
The fact that we want this retrograde throwback? I don't get the balance between --
SCARBOROUGH: To the 11th century.
JORDAN: The Crusades. The Crusades!
SCARBOROUGH: It used to be like, oh, they want to go back to the 1950s. [Screams] He wants to go back to the 11th century.
JORDAN: I know, I don't get it at all.
MIKA: He wrote it.
JORDAN: How do you have Elon on the one hand say that our tech is so outdated and antiquated, and then you have a Defense nominee who wants to go back to the Crusades? It makes no sense.
