It's Thursday, the sky is blue, the sun has risen in the east, and the legacy media is trying to catch the Secretary of Defense in a "gotcha" moment during a news conference. There's just one problem: Secretary Hegseth wasn't having it. In fact, he nearly collapsed in laughter over a rather silly question before providing the only possible answer.
The question:
Why didn't you acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission? The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys.
Secretary Hegseth's reply, once he was done laughing, was gold:
So, when I say something like our boys in bombers, see, this is the kind of thing the press does. Right? Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot. That's fantastic. She's fantastic. She's a hero. I want more female bomber pilots. I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things. But when you spin it as, because I say "our boys" in bombers as a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that. Whether they're men or women, very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots. And I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit, and the American people don't care. But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities, and we don't do that anymore. We don't play your little games.
That, folks, is how you do it. And it was only one of several gems to come out of this press conference.
Sparks Fly at Press Conference As Pete Hegseth Slams Fox News' Jennifer Griffin for Biased Reporting
Of course, there's a discussion to be had about women in combat roles, and that's a legitimate debate to have. A pilot, of course, isn't like an armored vehicle crewman or an infantry soldier, where a man's innate advantages in strength and endurance are an undeniable benefit - and how reducing standards to allow women in those roles is not only ill-advised, but downright foolish. In fact, there is a long history of women as combat pilots; in World War 2, or as it was known in the Soviet Union, the Great Patriotic War, women flew fighters in the Red Air Force, with some even making ace. Granted, the Soviet Union in 1941 was fighting with every available warm body and faced a very different situation, both tactically and strategically.
But that's not the discussion being had in this video clip. A legacy media reporter, once again, tried to lay a silly, "woke" gotcha on Pete Hegseth, and the Secretary of Defense adroitly reversed it on her and defenestrated her in his reply. And he was right to do so; these are serious matters, far more serious than the plumbing of the dedicated and motivated people flying those invisible bombers. No matter whether they were men or women, the service members in those bombers did a marvelous job in terminating the nuclear ambitions of the world's leading state sponsor of Islamic terror, and they should be congratulated as such.
That's what the Secretary of Defense is doing. And that's what the legacy media doesn't get, and likely never will.
Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.
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