At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) questioned Matthew L. Lohmeier, a former Lt. Col. in the Space Force and author of "Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military," during his confirmation hearing to be to be Under Secretary of Air Force.
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00:00Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to the witnesses, congratulations for your nominations.
00:05There's a beautiful phrase in the New Testament in both the Gospels of Luke and Matthew that goes
00:11something like this, from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks. And Mr. Lohmeyer, I want
00:16to ask you about your very active mouth and what it reveals about your heart, your tweeting. I'll
00:23just give you a few examples. August 9, 2024, the left lies about nearly everything it does,
00:29and tens of millions of Americans believe the lies. So trashing the left and calling tens of
00:35millions of Americans dupes. August 2, 2024, if today you're wondering why the left and Mitt Romney
00:42seem to have entirely lost any semblance of a moral compass, Vladimir Lenin provides you the answer.
00:51April 1, 2023, of all that is good and decent, the left is the real oppressor. But the one I want
00:59to ask you about is the one that Senator Hirono asked you about, and she read you an excerpt.
01:04I'll read the whole thing, a tweet from August 9, 2024. Pick this up in my base exchange at Buckley
01:11Air Force Base several weeks after J-6. This is what the Biden-Harris administration ushered in.
01:19After a government-led false flag and hoax at the Capitol, they immediately demonized the men
01:25and women in uniform. Then they purged conservatives and Christians with their shot mandates.
01:30Brilliant planning, actually. Tell me what the phrase that you wrote, government-led false flag
01:37and hoax at the Capitol, what does that mean with reference to January 6?
01:42Thanks for bringing this up again, Senator. I like the verses that you've read. I agree that it
01:49matters a great deal that we try and speak truthfully. I'll remind you respectfully that
01:55the comments that I made that you just shared were shared on my ex-account, I presume, while I was a
02:01private citizen in this country. In 2024, I'd been out of uniform for three years, and in fact, with
02:06absolutely no intention of returning to public service, I was quite enjoying private life and being
02:10able to criticize people as I wish. So they were a sincere reflection of what you had in your heart
02:15at the time you had them. Well, in as much as those statements were properly contextualized, and I
02:23can't speak to the context from which you've read, I always do try and speak honestly, and again, reserve
02:28the right to be wrong about any of my views. That's sad. But how about just the phrase, what does,
02:34with respect to January 6, what does your phrase, a government-led false flag and hoax at
02:40the Capitol mean? Let me share, too, that I, while I do recognize the other quotes that you've read,
02:47I don't recall having written those words that you just read about January 6. And so that could be
02:52partly a memory problem. It could be that I retweeted something and that quote has been pulled, but I
02:58don't recall using that phrase. What I do believe is that private citizens in this country can have the
03:04right to express their views as mean or as wrong as they might be, and that the men and women in uniform
03:10defend the right of the private citizen to, to, um, to speak those views, and that my concern while I was in
03:17uniform was, in fact, that the kind of partisan rhetoric that I had used that you just quoted from, for
03:24example, was actually being inserted into the military workplace in a way that divides troops. And so I was trying to hold our
03:32military cultural and workplace environment accountable to a standard of non-partisanship,
03:40as I've indicated, so that we can thrive in unity and not division. Now, private citizens have the right to say this.
03:46I completely agree. Private citizens have the right to say and believe whatever they want.
03:51This is a hearing about your qualifications for the position. The qualifications are essentially,
03:56in my view, a mixture of three things. Background, character, and judgment. It's about judgment.
04:04I don't want to confirm somebody into the Pentagon who would fall for a conspiracy theory that a fourth
04:10grader would find incredible. If I searched your social media and I saw you praising the great pumpkin
04:17over and over again, you would have the right to have that view, but I wouldn't want somebody who
04:22believed in the great pumpkin to be in the position that you're nominated for. And so if I'm thinking
04:29about people in the military, I know Virginia has an awful lot of people in the military. One of my kids
04:34is in the military. There are people in the military who are left, right, center, and maybe even more who
04:39are completely disinterested in politics. And we got to praise those. But how would somebody who's in the
04:43left, or considers themselves in the left, serving in the Air Force, when you say the left lies about
04:49nearly everything it does? Of all that is good and decent, the left is the real oppressor. How would
04:55any person who identifies that way feel any confidence that you as a leader would have their back?
05:01Yes, Senator. I think it's a great question. It's one I actually share your concern for and care
05:06greatly about. Let me just share briefly in a 10-second answer that at the time that I departed from active
05:11duty. I had young men and women in uniform of all racial or ethnic backgrounds, certainly different
05:17political backgrounds coming to me privately, sending me notes and saying, sir, I never knew what
05:22your political worldview was. I don't all, I don't understand completely why you've chosen to now take
05:27a stand for these issues or write about what you did, but I respect you as a leader. All right. And
05:31it's confirmed. My time has run over, but I'll just, in yielding back to the, to the chairman,
05:36I don't know where you were on January 6th. Most of us were here. A lot of us had a friend, a guy
05:42named Howie Liebingood, who was a Capitol police officer who died as a result of January 6th, whose
05:46widow, Serena, is one of my constituents. When I hear somebody, anybody, talk about what happened
05:53here as a false flag or a hoax, it is insulting to those of us who are here, and it's particularly
06:01insulting to those who lost loved ones that day. I yield back.