Vance Pressed on State of US Armed Forces After High-Profile Departures, Demands for Hegseth Ouster

Vice President JD Vancewas asked to comment on the current state of the U.S. armed forces amid reports of turmoil under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth'sleadership as he hosted Thursday's White House press briefing.

Vance, who took the podium to hold the first briefing since the departure of Karoline Leavitt, faced the question amid a tumultuous few weeks in the U.S. military, including the shocking resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll amid reported tensions with Hegseth, and some Republicans calling on President Donald Trumpto fire the Pentagon boss.

"Do you share any of the concerns of Secretary Driscoll and several Republican lawmakers about the current state of the Army, specifically about the departure of so many generals and other top officials ?" Weijia Jiang, CBS's senior White House correspondent, asked the vice president.

Vance replied:

Well, first of all, look, Dan is obviously a very good friend of mine I think he was a great secretary of the Army. Pete is also a good friend of mine, and I think he's an amazing secretary of war, and fundamentally… There are a lot of issues where I agree with Pete on the issue, where I'm in the most strike agreement with Pete is that we needed to have a culture shift in the Department of War.

We have to ask ourselves the very difficult questions, and it has nothing to do, I want to be clear, this has nothing to do with the amazing troops that we have, the amazing military officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted personnel that we have.

But America has fought a lot of wars since I've been alive. 42 years. And we have won almost none of them until Donald J. Trump became president of the United States.

What does that say about the culture of military leadership? The way that we did planning and what does it also say, frankly, about the political leadership that we've had in the White House at the Department of War for 40 years of, frankly, military misadventures?

What Pete came in wanting to do was revive the warrior spirit in the United States of America, and I think you see evidence of that happening in a lot of different ways.

Two important ways, is, number one, we have recruitment at all-time highs. We have real recruitment problems under the Biden administration because people didn't want to join a woke military, and what I mean is they didn't want to join any military that was geared towards a particular political narrative.

They just wanted to join a military that was willing to defend America's interests and do so at the very highest levels of professionalism and excellence. That is what the military, under President Trump's leadership is geared towards doing.

The second way that I judge is esprit de corps, that warrior spirit that you see at the Pentagon is when you go out and talk to troops today, they talk about how much better it is.

How much prouder they are, how much more they feel supported from Washington as opposed to, frankly, oppressed by Washington. We're trying to bring the best and the brightest into the United States military and support them in any way that we can.

If you recall, under the Biden administration, guys were getting fired because they were making their own health care decisions, and the Biden administration was treating them like they were convicted criminals.

We're not doing that. We're taking things in a much different direction. So I feel like the military is in a much better place than it was 18 months ago. Of course, there's a lot of work still to do.

And of course, some of that work is going to take years because frankly, the rot got so deep under previous failed administrations.

Vance's press briefing was the first since July 23. He briefly took on the gig in place of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who stepped down last month.

Trump, in announcing her departure, said she would be stepping away to spend more time with family. Her second child was born on May 1.

"Serving as the White House Press Secretary over the past year and a half has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime," she posted at the time. "I am incredibly grateful to President Trump for granting me so many extraordinary opportunities, such as working in the West Wing and spending countless hours in the Oval Office, flying around the world and meeting foreign leaders, and traveling across our beautiful country and meeting Americans from all walks of life."

Watch above via Fox News.

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