Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Thursday slammed the Department of Defense’s focus on injecting "woke nonsense" into the U.S. military amid China’s escalation against Taiwan.
Rubio, who is running for reelection against presumptive Democratic nominee Rep. Val Demings, tweeted a campaign video comparing past military recruitment videos with those under the Biden administration. The first part of the video shows clips featuring patriotic imagery and the military’s impressive firepower, while the second part shows clips about gender pronouns and other LGBTQ topics.
"We are not preparing for the threats we face," the ad concludes.
Rubio said Thursday in a statement provided to Fox News Digital that the Biden administration’s handling of the military is "dangerous" for America.
"No one should be surprised," Rubio said. "The Democrat Party, legacy media, and major U.S. corporations spent years calling America evil. Why would anyone sign up to put their life on the line for an evil nation? Rather than making the case for American greatness and appealing to our patriotism, the military is just parroting woke nonsense. It’s dumb, it doesn’t work, and it’s dangerous."
During an appearance earlier Thursday on "Fox & Friends," Rubio tied the issue to China, which has been conducting military exercises around Taiwan.
THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES TO HAVING ‘WOKE NONSENSE’ IN OUR MILITARY: RETIRED ARMY COLONEL
"When we see these things happen remember that our civilian leaders in the Pentagon have spent the last two years focused very seriously on the proper use of pronouns and ensuring that we host the right number of drag queen shows at different military bases around the world … and kicking out the unvaccinated," the senators said.
"And now their recruitment numbers are down because a lot of the working-class families who are the backbone of our recruitment efforts, these are the people that have for decades sent their sons and daughters to defend our country," he added. "They're not interested in joining some woke social experiment organization. So it's very sad. I hope it's a wake-up call that we begin to reallocate resources and attention to the right things and to our military capabilities in the Pacific."
China claimed Thursday that its military had successfully executed "precision missile strikes" in the Taiwan Strait, a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left the island.
China repeatedly condemned Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, and threatened to take action. On her final day in Taiwan, China’s navy and air force began conducting military exercises in six zones around Taiwan, with some overlapping Taiwan’s territorial waters.
China could invade Taiwan within the next 18 months, current and former officials familiar with U.S. and allied intelligence told Fox News Digital, suggesting a particularly "dangerous" window between the meeting of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party this November and the next U.S. presidential election in 2024.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.
