Tuberville: US military 'couldn't beat anybody right now'

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Monday that the U.S. military could not defeat any country in battle right now and called the armed services a "disaster."

“We need to build our military up,” Tuberville told Fox News's Laura Ingraham. “Our military right now, Laura, is a disaster. Absolute disaster. We couldn’t beat anybody right now.”

“We’ve got some good people in the military. But the structure of it, the things that we’ve done, the Democrats have destroyed it,” he added in the interview on “The Ingraham Angle.”

Tuberville’s comments came in a conversation about sending aid to Ukraine. He touted the fact that he has not voted to send any financial assistance to Ukraine as the country defends itself against Russian aggression.

In the interview Monday, Tuberville repeated his view that Ukraine cannot win the nearly three-year-long war and suggested he was eager for President-elect Trump to negotiate an end to the conflict.

“They can’t win, Laura,” Tuberville said. “I didn’t want to get these people killed. They can’t win. They’re undermanned, they’re understaffed.”

“President Trump is going to get them out of this,” he continued. “I don’t know what he’s going to have to give up to get them out of it, but we cannot continue to send money over there.”

Trump, who won the presidential election last week, has not yet announced his pick to lead the Defense Department, nor has he outlined his priorities for the armed forces. His allies and former officials, however, have telegraphed their expectation of a military reset in a second Trump administration: from cuts to spending and thinning of the top ranks, to a rollback of diversity and inclusion initiatives.