Commanders to Biden: Extremism is in your head

FPI / April 26, 2021

Lloyd Austin, Joe Biden's appointed defense secretary, made it a priority to purge so-called "domestic extremists" from the U.S. military.

Austin even issued a 60-day Pentagon-wide stand down order to address the issue.

Two military leaders made it clear what they think of Team Biden's narrative that "white supremacists" have infiltrated America's fighting forces.

"I am very confident that the number of extremists in my forces is zero,” said Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command said.

“Every person in my organization has to have a security clearance, for starters, right? And when you fill that form out, and I’ve been filling it out for 40 years, there is an extensive battery of questions designed to get after that very point.”

U.S. Strategic Command includes some 150,000 military and civilian personnel overseeing the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

“If there are any extremists in my organization, one, they hide it very well, and two, it’s just a matter of time before I get them,” Richard told the Senate Armed Services Committee during an April 20 hearing.

Gen. James Dickinson, commander of Space Command, also estimated the number of extremists under his command — “zero.”

“In the formations that I’ve had throughout my career, I have not seen that," Dickinson told the committee.

Leftist Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut made what Republicans said was a ridiculous assertion that 10 percent of all U.S. service members could be described as "extremist."

Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, noted: “That number is absurdly high, it wasn’t based on any data,” and would translate to 200,000 to 250,000 members of the military fitting within that category, Sullivan said. “Which, I think, is a disparagement of our men and women in the military.”

American Defense News managing editor Paul Crespo noted: "To date, despite the massive ideological witch hunt and outrageous, fact-free partisan allegations, less than a handful of active military members have been identified as having any real ‘extremist’ affiliations, out of nearly one and a half million serving today."

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