DeSantis warns about US Navy on Memorial Day.

On Memorial Day, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who served in the Navy, warned that the military needs to improve morale as left-wing policies have taken hold. According to DeSantis, the military he sees today “is different from the military I served in.”

“I see a lot of emphasis now on political ideologies, things like gender pronouns. I see a lot about things like [diversity, equity, and inclusion]. And I think that that’s caused recruiting to plummet. I think it’s driven off a lot of warriors, and I think morale is low.”

DeSantis, who announced his 2024 presidential candidacy last week, signaled that he would make changes to the military if he’s elected. In Monday’s interview, he questioned why anyone would want to serve with the current set of rules.

“Why would you have wanted to join the Marine Corps back in the day? Why did everybody else who joined the Army? I remember being in Iraq, and we were in Fallujah, and it was not going well. And yet people were still willing to sign up knowing they’d get sent to Iraq because they believed that this was something special.”

DeSantis did not elaborate on how he would change the military if elected, but he stressed “big changes” would be made starting day one. One policy he’s considering would entail a program to counter the Chinese regime, but he stressed that recruitment needs to be boosted amid reports of persistent shortfalls.

Recruiting Crisis in the Military

The U.S. Army last year missed its recruitment goals by 15,000 active-duty members, or some 25 percent of its target. The Army is now about 7 percent smaller than it was two years ago, according to the military’s figures. For the U.S. Air Force, Assistant Secretary Alex Wagner said this year that it will “will miss its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999,” although it met its recruitment goal for 2022.

In March, Wagner and several other top officials sounded the alarm during a Senate hearing on the military. “Today the military faces a recruiting crisis,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said, adding that for this year “the Army and Navy will miss the mark by 10,000 each.”

Left-Wing Policies and “Wokeness” in the Military

Several Republican senators have flagged the federal government’s and military’s overall pivot to “wokeness” and embracing of left-wing rules. Instead of focusing on fighting wars, the military is pushing policies targeting abortions as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), training that is pushing some young, conservative Americans away, said Republicans.

“I do hope this statement is not a reflection of the department priorities,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Ala.) said at the time. “We have a recruiting problem … and yet this statement, some 26 pages, does not say anything about recruiting until page 20. Much of the statement is related to abortion, diversity, inclusion, equity.”

Several days after his presidential launch, DeSantis told a Florida media outlet that he would remove left-wing DEI initiatives.