After blocking hundreds of promotions, Tuberville said the US has 'the weakest military than we've probably had in my lifetime'

• Tuberville said the US has "the weakest military that we've had in probably a year in my lifetime."
• He blamed Biden for the nation's defense forces having a difficult time recruiting new troops.
• He neglected to mention that he's personally prevented hundreds of officers from being promoted.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville said in a recent interview that he believes the US currently has "the weakest military that we've had in probably a year in my lifetime."

Tuberville made his comments Monday evening after Newsmax's Eric Bolling mentioned the US military's spending on diversity training.

"$114 million on diversity training, you gotta be kidding me," Tuberville said.

"We've got the weakest military that we've had in probably a year in my lifetime," he added. "Now we've got a lot of good military people, but infiltrating our military is all this wokeness and it's coming from the top, coming from Joe Biden, coming from Secretary of Defense Austin."

While Tuberville piled on President Joe Biden and his administration for what he considers to be a "self-inflicted" disaster, he didn't mention the outsized role effect he's had in 2023 on the nation's defense forces.

Following the Pentagon's decision to update its policies to allow service members to get reimbursed for out-of-state expenses for abortion care, Tuberville has singlehandedly prevented hundreds of military officers from getting promoted via a vote on the Senate floor.

For several months in 2023, Tuberville said he'd allow Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring individual promotion votes to the floor but he wouldn't allow the Senate to confirm hundreds of officers en masse as the chamber has traditionally done for decades.

He allowed three individual promotions to go through in late September.

Senate Republicans in recent weeks have repeatedly attempted to push through more individual votes on the chamber floor, only to be prevented more than 60 times by the former football coach.

In mid-November, just prior to the Senate taking a short recess for the Thanksgiving holiday, Democrats in the Senate Rules Committee unanimously voted to advance a resolution allowing the body to confirm the hundreds of stalled promotions.

While Schumer has yet to bring it to the Senate floor, all of the Democratic-caucusing senators are expected to vote in favor of the resolution once given the opportunity — 60 votes are needed for the resolution to pass.

It's unclear if there are enough Republican senators willing to vote with Democrats on the issue as several, including Sens. Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, Mike Lee, and JD Vance, successfully lobbied Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to oppose the resolution.