Pete Hegseth: ‘We Won World War II with Seven 4-Star Generals, Today, We Have Forty-Four 4-Star Generals’

TUBERVILLE: “Another one. According to the Pentagon, between 2001 and 2024, the number of civilian employees in the office of the secretary of Defense has nearly doubled from 1,500 to 3,000. Civilians on Joint Chiefs has increased from 191 to almost 1,000. Our military end strength goes down. Our staff numbers are exploding. What are you going to do about that?”
Hegseth: “Senator, we’re going to address that. We won World War II with seven four-star generals. Today, we have 44 four-star generals. There’s an inverse relationship between the size of staffs and victory on the battlefield. We don’t need more bureaucracy at the top. We need more warfighters empowered at the bottom. So it’s going to be my job working with those that we hire and those inside the administration to identify those places where fat can be cut so it can go toward lethality.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you.”
WICKER: “Thank you, Senator Tuberville.”