WASHINGTON, D.C.— U.S. Senator Steve Daines joined The Hugh Hewitt Show this morningto discuss the drag show for children at Malmstrom Airforce Base and other woke Biden policies endorsed by the Department of Defense (DoD) threatening American national security, as well as his legislation to prevent more drag shows from occurring at military bases in the future.
Transcript of Daines’ remarks below:
“Hugh, keep in mind, let me put some perspective around the Malmstrom Air Force Base. There are three bases in the nation that have responsibilities for our intercontinental ballistic missiles, the most massive weapons of mass destruction known to mankind. We are very proud of the fact that one-third of those missiles, 150 of those ICBMs, are in Montana.
“The best challenge coin I’ve ever received came from the Commander there from years ago and said, ‘scaring the hell out of America’s enemies since 1962.’ It goes back to Ronald Reagan—peace through strength is the greatest deterrence we have to keep authoritarian, crazy leaders around the world in check because they fear what the United States could do. So, it’s an important peacekeeping mission. So, as important as that mission is, we were shocked, shocked to find out back in June of 2021, the Malmstrom Air Force Base promoted a drag queen show for children on the base. This is nuts. I mean, our military’s mission is clear, it’s to provide military forces to deter and win wars and protect the security this nation. The left’s woke agenda is infecting the military, it’s distracting the Pentagon, distracting leadership from fulfilling that mission and it puts our national security at risk. And I’ll tell you why Hugh – you look at the recruiting goals, for example for the army, we were twenty-five percent below the target number in FY22. You want to recruit our best, our brightest, our toughest leaders to get into the military. And when the military is promoting this nonsense, this woke crazy left agenda, whether it’s drag queen shows at an Air Force base or the Air Force Academy telling people not to use terms like mom or dad, where the Navy said the conservative views, quote, are not mainstream anymore, Hugh, this is very concerning for many of us and this is why we are speaking loudly and exposing this around what the military has been doing in some situations.
“We’ve been starting to develop this timeline around how in the world this even happened in the first place. We’ve gone back, we found the Facebook posts that offered goodie bags to the first twenty-five children that showed up for this drag troop called ‘Mister Sisters.’ Remember when we talked about a drag queen show? These are men dressed up in women’s clothing in front of children. The Malmstrom base in their own Facebook post said, ‘We’re going to give goodie bags to the first twenty-five children there.’ I sent a letter demanding answers because this was brought up in a congressional hearing. This is really awful.
“You know I got raised by a U.S. Marine from Montana. You talk to the men and women who served in Montana and have served, they can’t believe it. And what’s going on here of course is not representative of the vast majority of those who serve, but the problem we face, this is a virus that now is starting to infect certain parts of the military. We’ve got to stop and imagine our adversaries are laughing at us. They’re laughing at us to think that we in some way as the United States of America, with the best fighting force in the world would be promoting this. So, we’re going to get to the bottom of who gave the green light. We want them held accountable.”
Read more about Daines’ bill to stop the Department of Defense from using taxpayer funds or taxpayer-funded facilities from hosting drag queen performances HERE.
Daines also sent a follow up letter to the Pentagon today since initial explanations from the Defense Department were completely inadequate. Read Daines’ letter HERE.
Last week, Daines wrote an op-ed highlighting the woke policies, including hosting drag shows, that are weakening the military.
Since the “Drag Story Time” that took place on Malmstrom Air Force Base was recently uncovered, Daines has led the fight to get answers and hold the administration accountable.
In March, Daines led Congressmen Ryan Zinke (MT-01) and Matt Rosendale (MT-02) in sending a letter to Pentagon leadership demanding answers on how and why this event took place.