Senate candidate Capt Hung Cao rails against drag queens in US military

From the New York Post: The Republican US Senate candidate for Virginia went off during a Wednesday night debate about drag queens and other diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the US military, saying service branches should recruit “alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts.”

Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain who deployed as a special operations officer to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, had choice words about the state of the country’s armed forces during the only scheduled debate against incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

“When you’re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we want,” Cao said when asked about earlier remarks he had made disparaging the Biden-Harris administration’s “growing obsession” with DEI.

“What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat ’em and ask for seconds,” he added. “Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.”

Cao told The Post in August that the Pentagon’s lack of focus on being able “to train [recruits] properly” was also having an effect on benefit programs for the “warfighters” ready to die for their nation.

“We need to equip them properly and not [be] concentrating on things like pronouns, you know? We need to make sure that our warfighters can, you know, are taken care of,” he said at the time.

“Like right now, do you know that one-third of our enlisted ranks are either on WIC [Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program] or food stamps?” Cao said.

Republicans and other critics have targeted the DEI efforts, which some studies have shown are ineffective, for causing the Pentagon to fall short of its recruitment goals in recent years.

Between October 2022 and March 2023, the Navy even hired an active-duty drag queen as a “digital ambassador” on TikTok and Instagram to help address the lagging figures.

House Republicans later queried Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the program, saying they were misled and told it “did not exist” before it was scrapped after making national headlines.

“Our military faces the worst recruiting crisis since the Vietnam War because young Americans don’t want to join what was once a trusted institution that has become overly politicized and hyper-focused on DEI initiatives,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) told The Post in May 2023, when introducing a separate bill to address low recruitment. . . . (read more on New York Post)

CAPT Cao: “When you’re using a drag queen…to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we need. What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them and ask for seconds.” pic.twitter.com/1sCSZ8AZVh

— Hung Cao (@HungCao_VA) October 2, 2024