Former Breitbart News Pentagon correspondent and Director of Communications and Chief spokesperson for the Department of the U.S. Navy Kristina Wong pointed out that it is “undeniable that there’s been a huge surge in military enlistment” under the Trump administration during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday.
While speaking to host Matthew Boyle, Wong said not only had U.S. Navy recruitment skyrocketed under Trump’s leadership, but “the Navy hits its recruiting goal of 40,600 future sailors for fiscal year 2025.”
Wong’s comments come after President Donald Trump praised the increase in U.S. Navy recruitments in a post on Truth Social. In Trump’s post, he shared an article from Fox News in which it was revealed that the U.S. Navy had reached its 2025 fiscal year recruiting goal, three months early.
“This is a huge milestone. It marks a big turn around for the Navy and the Military, writ large, from over the past five years when recruitment was really struggling and had really hit crisis mode. Last Monday, the Navy hit its recruiting goal of 40,600 future sailors for fiscal year 2025 — three months early. So, that means it hit that goal for the fiscal year — this past week, versus September 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year. And, that’s really big,” Wong explained.
“There are lots of reasons, the mainstream media likes to point out, likes to say this is not because of the Trump administration, however, I have statistics that show that it has surged under the Trump administration. But, just some of the reasons could be that the Navy has made some changes — it appears to have helped. So, for instance, in October, it created a recruiter operations center to troubleshoot recruiter issues and improve the process of recruiting and help out recruiters,” she went on to say.
“In April 2024, it began the future sailor preparatory course, and these were for future recruits who were a little bit overweight, and there were some other tweaks such as raising the enlistment age to 41 from 39, also raising enlistment bonuses. However, that said, it is really undeniable that there’s been a huge surge in military enlistment under President Trump’s leadership and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as my boss, the Department of the Navy Secretary John Phelan,” Wong added.
Wong continued to share statistics, and pointed that “across the military, by March 2025, there were 50 percent more new recruits” than the same time the previous year.
“Across the military, by March 2025, there were 50 percent more new recruits than in March 2024, under the Biden administration. Also, for the Navy specifically, in April 2023, the Navy met only 60 percent of its goal by April. In April 2024, it was only 65 percent, so this past April it was 101 percent, so that is a huge jump. That is a big difference, and it points to major progress under the Trump administration.”
