Donald J. Trump

And they love the Navy, and there's no better way to celebrate a birthday.

then, you know, with the commander in chief sharing it with them.

So I know that they're they're probably hyper excited about this.

And I know that he will not disappoint.

Admiral, we did have a just a demonstrable fact.

We did have an issue with recruiting right for a couple of years.

There's kind of been sorted out.

What are your thoughts about that?

Well, this is kind of a big deal, and it really reflects what the remarks of the Secretary of War expressed last week to the generals and admirals.

And basically, the recruiting was, you know, we didn't have a substantial mission.

You know, there was no active war in Iraq or in Afghanistan, and so a lot of people kind of lost interest in it.

But, you know, more specifically,

In the absence of recruiting, we had to compromise some of the standards that were elucidated by the Secretary of War as being unacceptable, fat sailors, you know, this type of thing.

And it used to be that if you failed two fitness tests, then you were sent home.

And what we changed that to be is because we couldn't afford to lose some of these sailors because there's nobody in the pipeline replacing them, we didn't send them home.

We just wouldn't promote them.

So this...

This was a big departure, and I think a lot of people will clamor for this to be implemented immediately, if not sooner, because it was compromising combat readiness.

And now recruiting is better.

For the first time in a number of years, we're able to make our numbers and not do it with fancy NASCAR programs and all these kind of things.