Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visits Oshkosh Corp. in Wisconsin
Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth visits Oshkosh Corp. in Wisconsin
With America at war, today, the U.S. Secretary of Defense visited battleground Wisconsin on Monday. He toured military manufacturing at Oshkosh Corp., which makes combat and military transport vehicles, as well as new robotic combat vehicles.
OSHKOSH, Wis. - With America at war, today, the U.S. Secretary of Defense visited battleground Wisconsin on Monday, Aug. 24.
He toured military manufacturing at Oshkosh Corp., which makes combat and military transport vehicles, as well as new robotic combat vehicles.
Visiting Oshkosh Corporation
What we know:
Hegseth also took a test drive and then spoke to hundreds of workers.
"I'm here on behalf of the commander in chief, Donald Trump, to say thank you for building faster and faster each day the arsenal of freedom that our warriors need," said Hegseth. "I'm also here because I want an opportunity to look all of you in the eye, my fellow patriots, and tell you how important your job is. We don't have the helmets without the hard hats, and we don't have the warriors without the workers. We are all shoulder to shoulder in this arsenal of freedom. The vehicles you make here, as you know, are used by our warriors all around the world."
Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth
"Every single one of you, every welder, every receptionist to the CEO is supporting American warriors every single day. This is not just another manufacturing job. This is patriotism in the form of steel," Hegseth told the workers.
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The secretary added that this company has played a role in every major conflict of the last 80 years.
The secretary also spoke of a proposed $1.5 trillion military budget, which he said would be the largest military budget in history and would be a generational investment.
"The President is completely committed to it. We believe between now and even before the election, but also through a lame duck, we will get every dime of that," Hegseth told reporters after his speech. "The reason we focus so much on it, is because this moment requires it: the nature of the threat around the world, the deferred maintenance. If you look under the hood, I don’t know what the previous administration was actually doing. And so we’re having to reinvest and restart the engine of the defense-industrial base at speed, at scale."
Oshkosh Corp. vehicles
The other side:
Wisconsin Democrats Chairman Devin Remiker criticized the visit.
"Pete Hegseth and Wisconsin Republicans like Tom Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden, and Bryan Steil are so desperate to do damage control for jacking up the cost of living with their wildly unpopular tariffs and endless war-of-choice in Iran that they have now stooped to parading around Hegseth to sell them on a failed economic agenda," stated Remiker.
None of the Republicans mentioned in the Democratic critique appeared with the secretary during his visit to Oshkosh.
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What's next:
This visit comes months before battleground Wisconsin helps decide who controls the United States Congress, as well as who should control the governor’s office: Republicans or Democrats.
Portions of this article were formatted using A.I. FOX6’s Jason Calvi and an editor reviewed it for accuracy and tone prior to publishing.
Editor's note: President Trump signed an executive order in Fall 2025 allowing DoD to use "Department of War" as a secondary title. But a formal name change requires an act of Congress, which at this point has not occurred. Unless and until Congress passes legislation switching the name, [FOX6] will continue to call it the Department of Defense. This also applies to Sec. Hegseth's title.
The Source: FOX6 received a press release regarding the event and sent crews to cover it.