Pete Hegseth: ‘Diversity Is Our Strength’ Is ‘The Single Dumbest Phrase In Military History’

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Friday that it was a massive mistake for the U.S. military to use the phrase “diversity is our strength.”

Hegseth, who was confirmed by the Senate late last month, spoke to an audience at the Pentagon auditorium, where he addressed issues such as NATO and Afghanistan and ripped diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Reuters reported.

“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,'” he said. “I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose, regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race.”

“In this department, we will treat everyone equally. We will treat everyone with fairness. We will treat everyone with respect, and we will judge you as an individual by your merit and by your commitment to the team and the mission,” he added. “That’s how it has been and that’s how it will be. Any inference otherwise is meant to divide or create complications that otherwise should not and do not exist.”

.@SecDef Pete Hegseth: "The single dumbest phrase in military history is 'our diversity is our strength.' I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose." pic.twitter.com/xgXobOndeo

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After his confirmation, Hegseth quickly got to work gutting DEI programs from the U.S. military. President Donald Trump tasked the Defense Secretary with reforming DoD’s selection and promotion process, eliminating DEI-based quotas, and prohibiting Critical Race Theory, DEI, and radical gender theory instructions. Hegseth also put an end to celebrating Black History Month and Women’s History Month, saying that “efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

During his speech on Friday, Hegseth also said that America’s actions in recent years on the global stage have “created the perception … of American weakness.”

“Chaos happens when the perception of American strength is not complete. And so we aim to reestablish that deterrence,” he added.

The Defense Secretary said that he will prioritize looking into “what happened in Afghanistan” after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from the country in 2021. Hegseth said the investigation is “not to be retrospective, not for retribution, but to understand what went wrong and why there was no accountability for it.”