Elaine Donnelly - President, The Center For Military Readiness Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, this is good news about recruiting in the army.
Over sixty thousand recruits have already been signed up. That
the goal was sixty thousand, and they hit it four
months early. Elaine Donnelly joins US president at the Center
for Military Readiness. There's quite a turnaround, Elane. What do
you attribute the turnaround to.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, good morning from Michigan. Well, it's an amazing thing.
I don't think we've ever seen a turnaround like this.
It was only a couple of years ago. Recruiting was
in crisis. They had to cut back on the count
the number of people they were looking for because they
knew they couldn't find them, and then they started tweaking things.
Toward the end of the Biden administration, things started to

(00:39):
tick up a little bit. But then the election happened
and all of a sudden, people are turning to the
military in a positive way that we've not seen before.
And I think it's cultural, it's not just economic. Recruiting
comes and goes depends on economics, but in this case, yes,
the job market is strong, recruiting a military market is

(01:02):
very strong. We've never seen anything like this, So what
does this mean? I think it means that the general
public supports the president in his aim to change the
culture of the military to what it should be, what
it was established to be. And the Secretary of Defense,
Pete Hagsas has encapitalized this in his phrase he talks

(01:22):
about the warrior culture. But warrior culture is more than
just literally engaging an enemy with a bayonet. It means
everything about the military, the sacrifice, the obedience to authority,
the preparation for whatever may happen. It's something that young
people are starting to turn to in ways we've not

(01:43):
seen before. So my hope is that as we go
into the process of writing the Defense bill, the National
Defense Authorization Act for twenty twenty six, it's called the NBAA.
It hasn't been taken up yet because of the big
deal that everybody's talking about. This is different. But I'm

(02:03):
hoping that the members of Congress will respond to that
public support and do things that need to be done.
And there's four things that need to be done, four corners,
so to speak. Who They need to establish merit as
the sole basis for personnel actions. Congress needs to specifically
prohibit discrimination and or preferences based on non merit factors,

(02:28):
they can allow for reasonable limited exceptions, and finally define
key terms, including words like merit and sex. Now, the
word sex, that's where the transgender issue comes in. There
are ways to make it very clear. This is a
matter of military readiness and it's something that Congress is

(02:49):
certainly equipped to do. It has the constitutional duty. Yeah,
I think policy for the military.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
I think young men in particularly been craving the type
of discipline that you're talking about in the turn to
more traditional values. And I think the moment that Pete
Hegseth and the President stood up and basically said, we're
going back to the way the military was intended to be.
We're not going to force you to take a COVID shot,
we're not going to trump, we're not going to put
you into to DEI woke in doctrination. You are here

(03:16):
to be part of a fighting machine to protect this country,
and this is what we're going to do exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
And people responded to that in the most amazing way. Now,
many of us have been saying this for a long time,
but we've not seen it in action until the current administration.
But here's the problem. Everything is under litigation right now.
The executive orders that President Trump and Pete Haig Seth.
His directives following those orders are very well done, with

(03:45):
the exception of tweaking, but for the most part, they
did a good job. But they're all in court. We
don't know what federal courts will do. The Department of
Justice did do a good job in persuading the Supreme
Court to allow the transgender policy. I should say, actually
the policy regarding gender dys for you excuse me, It

(04:08):
is going forward pending to the litigation. But we don't
know how the litigation is going to turn out. So
that's the problem. We don't know how the White House
is going to be or whose hands it will be
after Trump leaves office. That's another X factor. We don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
That's where Congress comes in, right, need, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
They have to codify these things.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Exactly right, Lane Donnelley, I'm out of time, but a
pleasure to talk to you. Thank you, President. At the
Center for Military Readiness, Elane Donnelly, it's six twenty seven