Pete Hegseth: "Americans deserve the best of the best"

Pete Hegseth: "I don't know exactly how staffing was handled at that particular air traffic control tower, and it seems there was a shortage, and the investigation will tell us more about it. But the environment in which we select pilots or air traffic controllers, as the president rightly pointed out yesterday, must be the highest possible standard, the best of the best, those who manage multiple flights, meaning one flight per minute and radio traffic.

I think the closest analogy to the military service are pilots or air traffic controllers. I don't care what their background is, their race, their gender, whether they are rich or poor. I just need them to be good at their job because I need my flight to land safely.

The same applies to the Department of Defense, to our military. I don't care about their background, gender, or skin color. I want the best. And that's why, when the president says "based on merit and without regard to color," he's absolutely right across the government.

So it is correct to point out that at the FAA or in our flights, it should be about nothing but excellence. That's it, excellence. I don't care about the skin color of my pilot or the air traffic controller. But for too long, under Biden, we've been concerned with these things, emphasized those things, pushed real or perceived quotas.

In the Department of Defense, we are ending all of that. It has been made very clear in all our services and commands. It will only be based on merit. And that means we will get the best of the best. And that's what our taxpayers and the American people expect and deserve.

And in the realm of war, which is the work of the Department of Defense, if you don't have the best, you lose people. And that's why this is so important."