Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., was steadfast in his commitment to continue holding up military promotions over the Pentagon's abortion policy, telling Newsmax that he's going to have these holds "for a long, long time."
Further, Tuberville pushed back on military readiness being negatively affected by his holds.
"I've talked to generals and admirals every day," Tuberville said on "Greg Kelly Reports." "There's no problem with readiness. … This is my prerogative to be able to put a hold on anything.
"And so, I've not changed my mind. I'm doing this for the right reasons," Tuberville added. "I'm tired of Pinocchio [President] Joe [Biden] legislating from the White House. They're not gonna do that on my watch. The people of Alabama have somebody up there that's going to vote for them. And if we're going to have some kind of different abortion policy in the military, it's gonna take a vote on the Senate floor. And if we don't do that, I'm gonna have these holds for a long, long time."
At issue is the Pentagon providing 3 weeks of administration absence, travel allowance, and a transportation allowance for anyone who wants an abortion.
In addition to changing policy that seemingly promotes abortions, as Kelly pointed out, Tuberville point-blank asked if anyone was complaining about the old abortion policy.
"They brought on these experts in basically telling us why they needed to do this," Tuberville said. "It was for readiness, and it was for recruiting, which is a crock of crap to be honest with you. I asked him if there was anybody who complained about it for the last 35 years. They said, no. I said, 'Well, that's funny. Why would you change something nobody's complaining about?'
"And so 60% of the people of this country say that we should not spend one dime of taxpayer money towards abortion. And so that's the Democrats and Republicans," Tuberville said. "So I'm fighting for both sides here.
"Again, if I was affecting the military of the United States of America, which I respect and what I love, and which I believe in, I wouldn't be doing this, but it is not affecting it. … There's no way they're going to talk me out of this."
In fact, Tuberville said that military readiness is more affected by woke policies in the military than his holds.
"The problem I'm having now is we're becoming more and more woke every day, and it started under Obama," he said. "It's sad to see this happen. Let me tell you if we lose the military … we're in huge trouble, and we're headed in that direction because the problem we're having right now with readiness is not coming from anything other than all these woke policies that they're pushing.
"This is our military is not an equal opportunity employer. We want the best of the best pilots, generals, admirals, people that believe in this country that will fight to the end for this country."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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