For Immediate Release
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org
Vice News: Blake Masters Calls Military “Rotten,” “Incompetent” “Bozos”
Republican Senate Nominee Repeatedly Calls for “Purging”, “Cleaning House” of Military
PHOENIX — Today, Vice News released a new report exposing Blake Masters’ flagrant history of criticizing the military, unearthing comments where he calls our brave servicemembers “rotten,” “incompetent,” and “bozos.”
For over a year, Masters, a man with no record of military service, has insulted our troops while running to fill the seat of late Senator John McCain against Senator Mark Kelly, both Navy combat pilots. Masters’ demonstrated disrespect, along with his past comments calling World War II “unjust” and emails questioning the “official story” of 9/11, illustrate just how unfit he is to serve.
See below for key excerpts or read the full story here:
- Blake Masters…has repeatedly said the U.S. should clean house on the senior ranks of the military, pushing the claim that all the generals and admirals are “woke” and “left-wing” losers who’ve never won a war.
- [Masters said] “I would love to see all the generals get fired. You take the most conservative colonels, you promote them to general.”
- Masters explicitly called for a wholesale firing of the generals at least seven times between August 2021 and March 2022.
- And [Feaver] said Masters’ solution—replace supposedly liberal generals with a core of conservatives—would be disastrous, comparing it to the ideological purges of military brass in Russia that weakened the Red Army before WWII as well as before the current debacle in Ukraine.
- Masters’ harsh criticism of the military leadership is the latest in a long history of attacks from the right on ostensibly apolitical institutions…But Masters goes a step further. First, conservatives usually spare the military from these attacks on government officials, both because it’s a historically conservative institution and because the idea of an apolitical military under civilian control is such a fundamental cornerstone of American democracy.
- And the military isn’t the only national security organization where Masters wants to clean house. He has suggested similar purges should be made in the Justice Department and FBI…
- [Masters said] “The general core is rotten…So I think cleaning house in the military, cleaning house in the DOJ, FBI, making sure those institutions aren’t weaponized against us, that’s a huge project.”
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