Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott criticized the U.S. military on March 17 as insufficiently “lethal,” claiming that top leaders are forcing service members to be too “woke.” As an example, he claimed that a Navy ship tracking a Chinese vessel had had to abandon that mission because of a mandatory training program about transgender people.

During an appearance on the Pensacola, Florida, radio station News Radio 92.3 “Pensacola Morning News” program, Scott was asked by host Andrew McKay about military readiness and said: “They’re more focused on woke stuff than they are on being lethal. I think our job of our military — and I served in the Navy, my dad served in the Army — our job is basically to scare the crap out of our enemies. They’re putting a lot of time into pronouns, stuff like that.”

Pressed to explain, Scott said:

There’s great people in the Navy, there’s great people all over, but they’re being pushed to spend more time on wokeness. On pronouns. … I was talking to a retired, I think, captain, and he was commander of a ship and he said, he said [inaudible] they had to do transgender training. They were following a Chinese ship that they were supposed to do and they were told that day they had to stop and train everybody on transgender. Now that might be an important issue, but not in the middle of your job. And they’ve lost sight. … It’s Biden. This is what Biden’s pushing.

Scott said President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley have “just become woke” and are more focused on gender and skin color than on having a lethal military force. . . .

. . . . Scott, who enlisted in the Navy in 1970 and served for 2 1/2 years, told radio host McKay: “My experience in the Navy was that they created unbelievable opportunities for everybody. But guess what, when I was there it was a meritocracy: Bust your butt.” . . .  . (read more on America Independent)