Trump declare an end to ‘politically correct’ leadership in US military

Quantico: President Donald Trump revealed that he wants to use American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and joined Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday in declaring an end to “woke” culture before an unusual gathering of hundreds of top US military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.

Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about US nuclear capabilities and warned that “America is under invasion from within.”

“After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help we’re defending the borders of our country,” Trump said.

Hegseth had called military leaders to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning.

His address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military

leaders should “do the honourable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.

Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had

fuelled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.

Admirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the

military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-centre agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.