President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House has led to soaring morale at the Pentagon, retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt said on Newsmax Sunday.
"He is carrying a big stick and speaking firmly. It has a reverberating effect back here at home, especially in the Pentagon," Holt told Newsmax's "Sunday Agenda."
The military wants to be led, he said, "by a no-BS, constitutionally focused ... leader who believes in peace through strength — the highest form of readiness."
Holt added that recruiters are also reporting after Trump's election that more people are expressing interest in joining the military.
He praised Trump's decision to visit Arlington National Cemetery Sunday to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
"It's a beautiful thing for him to start the day before he starts," Holt said, referencing Inauguration Day, "at Arlington, where those lie who paid the ultimate price for our nation."
The retired general also discussed the ongoing news about TikTok.
TikTok said Sunday it was restoring service to users in the United States just hours after the popular video-sharing platform went dark in response to a federal ban, which Trump said he would try to pause by executive order on his first day in office.
Trump said he planned to issue the order to give TikTok's China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the ban takes full effect. He announced the move on his Truth Social account as millions of U.S. TikTok users awoke to discover they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.
Google and Apple removed the app from their digital stores to comply with the law, which required them to do so if TikTok parent company ByteDance didn't sell its U.S. operation by Sunday. The law, which passed with wide bipartisan support in April, allows for steep fines.
Holt called the legislation "just garbage" on Sunday.
"It really enables a back door to censor everybody in social media, including X, and we don't like that," he said. "But if TikTok does resume, don't just stop at severing that data link to China. Make sure we go through all of that code that's China-based.
"We're focusing on this nonsense when we should be focusing on the tremendous amount of Chinese land around our military bases, the drones, and the unaccounted-for People's Liberation Army here in our country that came across the border," Holt added.
"And let's not forget the Chinese police stations and Confucius Institutes all need to come out of this country. We need to show China that the Western Hemisphere, and this country in particular, is not their garden."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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