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“What Masters Has Said Is Nothing Short Of Disgraceful” – Arizona Veterans “Slam” Masters’ “Disqualifying” Attacks On U.S. Military

Arizona Republic: “A guy who’s not served one minute in uniform says fire the generals? … (We) veterans don’t need that; the country doesn’t need that.”
Northeast Valley News: “What Masters has said is nothing short of disgraceful.”
Tucson Sentinel: “That’s big talk for a guy who never served anybody but himself.”

Following reports that Masters “repeatedly has criticized [the] U.S. military,” news coverage is highlighting how Arizona veterans “fired back at Blake Masters’ incendiary comments” – slamming his remarks as “disqualifying,” “nothing short of disgraceful,” and “an insult to everyone.”

See for yourself:

Arizona Republic: GOP Senate hopeful Blake Masters repeatedly has criticized US military

  • Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters repeatedly has said there’s “rot” in the military and that its leadership is inadequate, incompetent and should be fired.
  • Over the course of several podcasts, interviews and social media posts between September 2021 and January, Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, aired his criticisms of top military brass and his disdain for the military not winning more wars.
  • “Our top generals have turned into woke corporate bozos, and our troops deserve better,” he wrote on Twitter in November, accompanied by a campaign video of him lambasting the military.
  • “I hate to say it, but our military leadership is totally incompetent,” Masters said, standing in what appears to be an agricultural field. “No active duty American general has ever won a war. Think about how crazy that is. These people get promoted by giving politically correct PowerPoint presentations.”
  • His competitor, incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and other Democrats have called attention to some of Masters’ comments ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
  • Kelly has worked to highlight his military service as a U.S. Navy combat pilot and his support for service members and Arizona veterans, including through his work on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Some veterans from both parties met in Chandler on Wednesday to discuss issues they are facing and their support for Kelly.
  • “We’ve served, Senator Kelly has served and he wants to continue to serve,” veteran Martin Sepulveda said at the event. “The stuff I’ve heard from this opponent, as a veteran, is appalling. Fire the generals? A guy who’s not served one minute in uniform says fire the generals? … (We) veterans don’t need that; the country doesn’t need that.”
  • “Senator Kelly spent twenty-five years in the Navy and flew 39 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. He understands the meaning of public service, while Blake Masters clearly does not,” Kelly campaign spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer said in a written statement. “Masters’ comments demean and disrespect the service of the hundreds of thousands of service members and veterans who call Arizona home.”
  • At a Wednesday veterans meeting in Chandler organized by the Kelly campaign, about a dozen veterans discussed their top issues, ranging from health care to preventing sexual assault in the military, and explained why they’re backing Kelly.
  • Paul Hickman, a former longtime aide to the late Republican Sen. John McCain, who chaired the Armed Services Committee, pointed to parallels between the two senators.
  • “Two carrier-based combat pilots, two Navy captains, two guys who really care a lot about the veterans community, about national security policy. And issues like that create an opportunity to put a coalition like this together, where partisanship is secondary and it is the greater objective that binds us,” Hickman said.
  • Sepulveda, a combat veteran… is a Republican, but said Kelly being a veteran is the No. 1 reason he’s backing the senator. He was previously one of the co-chairs of McCain’s veterans coalition formed in 2015.
  • “Generals don’t make policy, civilian leadership does, so that right there tells me how little he (Masters) understands about the policy and who directs the policies of the United States military,” Sepulveda said. “Those statements have no place in a serious discussion about something as serious as our military.”

Tucson Sentinel: Tucson vets call GOP Senate candidate Masters’ comments on military ‘disgraceful rhetoric’ & ‘disqualifying’

  • Three Tucson-area veterans sharply criticized U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters during a press conference Thursday, calling comments he made against American military leaders “disqualifying” and “disgraceful.”
  • Masters… has become haunted by comments he’s made over the years—first as a student at Stanford taking digs at the U.S. government on libertarian and CrossFit blogs—and later as a neophyte political candidate backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
  • This includes a statement Masters released on Twitter in November, when he called top generals “woke corporate bozos.” Along with the statement, Masters released a video where he argued the nation’s military leadership is “woke” and “totally incompetent.”
  • Thursday, with the Pima County Courthouse as a backdrop, Sylvia Gonzalez Andersh, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, called Masters’ comments “disgraceful rhetoric.”
  • Don Womack, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, argued Masters “doesn’t care that I, like countless Americans before me, put everything on the line to defend our nation. To protect our freedoms. To keep us safe.”
  • Womack said Masters’ comments were “despicable” and “disqualifying.”

Arizona Mirror: Tucson vets slam U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters

  • A group of Tucson veterans fired back at Blake Masters’ incendiary comments on the military this week, saying he isn’t a fit representative for the more than half a million veterans in the state.
  • “A man like Blake Masters, who has no respect for our service – he has no business representing us anywhere, let alone at the U.S. Senate,” said Air Force veteran Sylvia Gonzalez Andersh, during a press event Thursday afternoon organized by the Arizona Democratic Party.
  • During the event Andersh pointed to recently revealed emails Masters wrote about 9/11, and the ensuing Iraq war as proof that he lacks respect for service members. The emails were sent while Masters was in college, and in them he defended the right to disseminate conspiracy theories about 9/11 and questioned the “story we’ve been told” about the tragic event.
  • “Thousands of Americans lost their lives on that horrible day. And many, too many, of my fellow men and women paid the ultimate price in the conflicts that followed. With his words, Blake Masters dishonors their service and he dishonors their memory,” Andersh said, her voice breaking.


Northeast Valley News: Blake Masters offends some Arizona veterans

  • Some Tucson veterans gathered on Friday to show disdain for comments made by U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters—saying Blake Masters “isn’t a fit representative for the more than half a million veterans in Arizona.”
  • Ritz reportedly said that if Masters wants to criticize the military—he’s not exactly the one to do it—and distinguished a stark difference between Masters and Mark Kelly, Arizona’s current U.S. Senator who flew combat mission in the Gulf War.
  • Ritz suggested that since Masters is still young enough—he ought to “join up” even offering to escort him to a nearby recruiting station.

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