Virginia Republican Senate candidate and former Navy captain Hung Cao has gone viral on X, formerly Twitter, with a comment regarding Navy officers made during his debate with his opponent Tim Kaine on October 2.
Cao’s statement regarding Navy recruits was in response to a question regarding whether he believes diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are hampering the military recruiting process.
He said, “When you’re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we want. What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them, and ask for seconds. Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.”
Cao appears to be referring to the announcement of a new digital ambassador for the Navy, Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, a drag queen who used the stage name Harpy Daniels, last year.
The Navy’s inclusion of a drag queen ambassador in an effort to bring in more recruits sparked a widespread online debate about LGBTQ+ military members.
Following Cao’s statement, Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he believes the reason the military is having a hard time garnering recruits is due to the fact that people do not know about the benefits of the military, and added, “DEI is a red herring.”
Virginia Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao speaking at a rally for former president Donald Trump in Chesapeake, Virginia on June 28. Cao criticized DEI initiatives regarding military recruitment and said that the Navy only needs “alpha males and females” during his debate with Tim Kaine on Wednesday.
Steve Helber/Associated Press
Kaine said that in order to garner more recruits, the military needs to “reach out to new constituencies and new groups” and “convince people the benefits of military service are enormous” and raise awareness of the G.I. bill.
Passed in 1944, the G.I. bill provides financial assistance to qualifying veterans and their family members to pursue education and cover other expenses while pursuing school or training, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
He also said that the U.S. needs to work on innovative programs to “help young people pre-qualify to pass the physical exams and then have a long and productive career serving our country.”
The clip of Cao’s comments was posted on his X account and has gained 1.3 million views, 53,000 likes, and 10,000 reposts.
The reaction was mixed: many users in the comments agreed with Cao and voiced their support for his campaign, and said they agreed with the sentiment that the Navy should be about “courage and strength, not a talent show.”
Others criticized his response, suggesting it implied that the military wasn’t interested in recruiting “LGBTQ+-friendly people.”
Newsweek reached out to Cao’s campaign and Kaine’s press secretary for comment via email outside of business hours.
During the debate, Cao and Kaine also discussed tariffs, illegal immigration, student loan forgiveness, housing affordability, gun crimes, and more.
Cao came to the U.S. as a child as a refugee from Vietnam in 1975 and was raised in Virginia.
A retired Navy captain, he served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia as a Special Operations Officer (Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Deep Sea Diving), and worked with Homeland Security, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, in addition to balancing the Navy’s budget at the Pentagon, according to his website.
He previously ran to represent Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in 2022, but lost to the incumbent Jennifer Wexton, Democrat.
Cao was endorsed by former president Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social in May, where Trump wrote, “A Combat Veteran and Highly Decorated Special Operations Officer, Hung Cao will be a tireless fighter to stop inflation, grow our Economy, secure our Border, strong support our incredible Military/Vets, and defend our always under siege Second Amendment. Hung Cao has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
If Cao’s attempts to flip the typically Democrat state are successful, he would be the first Republican Senator to take office since John Warner, who was elected in 2002, according to the Associated Press.
According to the most recent polling listed by polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Cao was trailing behind Kaine by 10 points as of September 24.
As of 2022, 6.1 percent of military personnel identified as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, according to Health.mil, the military health care system that provides coverage to members of the military both on and off the battlefield, as well as veterans and their families.
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