Pete Hegseth: 'It's Been A Bad Three Weeks For The Houthis And It's About To Get Worse'

2 days ago

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth celebrated strikes on the Houthis.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. President, many of the Palestinian Americans who voted for you, voted for you and not for

00:22Biden because you've promised them to end the war in Gaza.

00:28The war is still going on and there's no hostage deal.

00:31Do you have any update on that?

00:32Well, I'd like to see the war stop and I think the war will stop at some point that won't

00:37be in the too distant future.

00:39Right now we have a problem with hostages.

00:40We're trying to get the hostages out.

00:42We got quite a few of them out, but it's a long process.

00:45It shouldn't be that long.

00:47We have a big problem that we've done.

00:50I think I'll ask Pete to maybe talk about it for a second because a lot of people are

00:53asking the Houthis.

00:55We've been very tough and very successful militarily.

00:59We've really damaged them badly.

01:03These were people shooting down ships and other things, by the way, flying objects like

01:08airplanes.

01:10And we've put a major hurt on the Houthis, which nobody's been able to do.

01:16We've really hit them hard and they know it and they don't know what to do.

01:22And it's every night, night after night.

01:25And we've gotten many of their leaders and their experts, their experts on missiles.

01:30I mean, they actually make missiles.

01:32Nobody thought that, but they make missiles.

01:34It's highly sophisticated and they're very tough, but they've been very badly damaged.

01:40Nobody else was able to do that.

01:41But Pete, you want to discuss that?

01:43Yes, sir.

01:44It's been a bad three weeks for the Houthis and it's about to get worse.

01:49It's been a devastating campaign, whether it's underground facilities, weapons manufacturing,

01:54bunkers, troops in the open, air defense assets.

01:58We are not going to relent.

02:00And it's only to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting

02:04at our ships.

02:05And we've been very clear, the Iranians as well, they should not continue to provide

02:11support to the Houthis.

02:12And that message has been made very clear.

02:14So we have a lot more options and a lot more pressure to apply.

02:18And we know, because we see the reports, how devastating this campaign has been in them

02:21and we will not relent.

02:23We have a great military.

02:24There's no military like our military.

02:27And despite Biden having given a lot, but nevertheless a pretty small piece, but it

02:33was a lot of our military away in Afghanistan and one of the dumbest situations, I think,

02:40and maybe the most embarrassing situation we've ever been involved in, that that short

02:44period of time in Afghanistan, what a disgrace that was.

02:49But left a lot of our military behind, left, left.

02:53You see them in their annual parades where they're parading trucks that are armor plated

02:58and different things that they can't, but it's many billions of dollars we left behind.

03:02But despite that, we have a tremendous military.

03:06That was a very small portion because we rebuilt the military during my first term.

03:11And we, we have great, great things happening with our military.

03:16We also essentially approved a budget, which is in the facility.

03:22You'll like to hear this of a trillion dollars, one trillion dollars, and nobody's seen anything

03:28like it.

03:29We have to build our military and we're very cost conscious, but the military is something

03:33that we have to build and we have to be strong because you got a lot of bad forces out there

03:37now.

03:38So we're going to be approving a budget, the, and I'm proud to say, actually the biggest

03:42one we've ever done for the military.

03:45We're cutting other things that were under Doge, but under a lot of other, when you look

03:51at a woman getting $2 billion for environmental and it had nothing to do with environmental

03:57and they had a hundred dollars in the bank and they give her 2 billion, many, many of

04:01those cases, all that stuff is going to be cut out, but we are getting a very, very powerful

04:07military.

04:08We have things under order now, the likes of which we've never had before.

04:12We've never had the kind of aircraft, the kind of missiles or anything that we have

04:19ordered.

04:20And it's in many ways too bad that we have to do it because hopefully we're not going

04:23to have to use it.

04:25But the military is very, very powerful and it's going to remain that way.

Pete Hegseth: 'It's Been A Bad Three Weeks For The Houthis And It's About To Get Worse'

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