Members of the military wait for U.S. President Donald Trump to arrive for a meeting convened by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia, U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Lt. Col. Amy McGrath called out U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for trying to overshadow women’s contribution to the U.S. military in his effort to meet “the highest male standard’ among U.S. soldiers.

“Each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat [Military Occupational Specialty], for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard,” Hegseth told leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia on Tuesday. “Only because this job is life or death, standards must be met and not just met at every level. We should seek to exceed the standard to push the envelope to compete.”

“Hegseth still has a lot to learn, unfortunately,” said McGrath, speaking with the “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” “When I flew my combat missions, there was not a set male standard and a female standard for flying an aircraft onto the back of an aircraft carrier. You can either do it or you can't. Combat jobs have had one standard for a long time. And part of when we opened combat jobs to women, those of us that were in those jobs wanted one standard to be set. And it was — so I think it's kind of ridiculous.”

“But, honestly, that, in comparison to the rest of what we heard in the last hour, is really minor,” McGrath added. “That speech was bonkers by the president, and everybody sitting in that room knows that we don't have a coherent foreign policy or defense policy. And that, I think, is a bigger issue indeed.”

McGrath was particularly wrathful at President Donald Trump suggesting the city of Chicago serve as a kind of “training ground” for urban warfare.

“There was a lot of rambling. There was a ton of lies. There was a lot of politicization … and craziness that you heard from this speech, but the scariest part was when the president talked about using our cities as a training ground for the United States military,” said McGrath. “Now, the military has done training in cities before, but that's not what I think he's talking about here. He's talking about using the military in ways that we should not see in America. And I'm very worried about this.”

“I think the whole part of bringing these generals and admirals back here was to discuss this type of thing, and it should it should scare us all,” McGrath said. “This is something that we just don't do in America. We have police to fight crime, and we should be putting money into those police forces, not sending American troops that are trained for war to American cities.”