Trump’s West Point Graduation Speech
It was rather unusual.
AP (“Trump’s speech to West Point graduates mixes praise, politics and grievances“):
President Donald Trump used the first service academy commencement address of his second term Saturday to laud graduating West Point cadets for their accomplishments and career choice while also veering sharply into a campaign-style recitation of political boasts and long-held grievances.
“In a few moments, you’ll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history,” Trump said at the ceremony at Michie Stadium. “And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term.”
Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, the Republican president told the 1,002 members of the class of 2025 at the U.S. Military Academy that the United States is the “hottest country in the world” and underscored an “America First” ethos for the military.
“We’re getting rid of distractions and we’re focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America’s adversaries, killing America’s enemies and defending our great American flag like it has never been defended before,” Trump said. He later said that “the job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures,” a reference to drag shows on military bases that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration halted after Republican criticism.
Trump said the cadets were graduating at a “defining moment” in Army history as he accused political leaders in the past of sending soldiers into “nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us.” He said he was clearing the military of transgender ideas, “critical race theory” and types of training he called divisive and political.
Past administrations, he said, “subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars.”
At times, his remarks were indistinguishable from those heard in a political speech, from his assessment of the country when he left office in January 2021 to his review of last November’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, arguing that voters gave him a “great mandate” and “it gives us the right to do what we want to do.”
Frequently turning the focus on himself, he reprised some of his campaign rally one-liners, including the claim that he has faced more investigations than mobster Al Capone.
At one point the crowd listened as Trump, known for his off-message digressions, referred to “trophy wives” and yachts during an anecdote about the late real estate developer William Levitt, a billionaire friend who Trump said lost momentum.
But the president also took time to acknowledge the achievements of individual graduates.
He summoned Chris Verdugo to the stage and noted that he completed an 18.5-mile march on a freezing night in January in just two hours and 30 minutes. Trump had the nationally ranked men’s lacrosse team, which held the No. 1 spot for a time in the 2024 season, stand and be recognized. Trump also brought Army’s star quarterback, Bryson Daily, to the lectern, where the president praised Daily’s “steel”-like shoulder. Trump later used Daily as an example to make a case against transgender women participating in women’s athletics.
In a nod to presidential tradition, Trump also pardoned about half a dozen cadets who had faced disciplinary infractions.
He told graduates that “you could have done anything you wanted, you could have gone anywhere.” and that “writing your own ticket to top jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley wouldn’t be bad. But I think what you’re doing is better.”
His advice to them included doing what they love, thinking big, working hard, holding on to their culture, keeping faith in America and taking risks.
“This is a time of incredible change and we do not need an officer corps of careerists and yes men,” Trump said. “We need patriots with guts and vision and backbone.”
NYT (“Trump gives the commencement address at West Point, stressing a new era for the military.”):
President Trump told cadets in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Saturday that they were the first graduates to serve in a “golden age” of the nation that was a result of his efforts to rebuild the military and reshape American society.
Gone were the “nation-building crusades” in countries that “wanted nothing to do with us” and leadership that subjected servicemembers to “absurd ideological experiments here and at home,” Mr. Trump told the group of about 1,000 cadets.
Wearing his red “Make America Great Again” hat, Mr. Trump leaned into his aggressive agenda to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the government, military and virtually every facet of American life, in making his pitch that the nation was worth fighting for again.
He took credit for building the military “better than ever before,” saying it had bolstered its recruitment numbers, morale and commitment to protecting America first. He drew applause from guests at times, such as when he discussed the issue of transgender athletes playing in female sports and hiring on merit over diversity.
At the outset of his second term, he issued a spate of executive orders targeting programs and policies that aimed to help address systemic racism, which he deemed divisive and unpatriotic.
He claimed that his predecessors had “subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes, while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars.”
“All of that’s ended. It’s ended strongly,” he said. “They’re not even allowed to think about it anymore.”
[…]
“We’re getting rid of the distractions,” Mr. Trump said, “and we’re focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America’s adversaries, killing America’s enemies and defending our great American flag like it has never been defended before.”
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures,” he continued, before seeming to misspeak by adding, “but to spread democracy to everybody around the world, at the point of a gun.”
A remarkable speech, for sure.
The graduating cadets, who are commissioned as second lieutenants in the Regular Army at the end of the ceremony, have been instructed from the very beginning of their time at West Point that officers are to be outside partisan politics. While they may well have opinions about the various policy issues of the day and preferences regarding the outcome of presidential and other elections—and even vote in them—their role is to carry out the lawful orders of the elected Commander-in-Chief and other civilian policymakers.
Traditionally, presidents have honored this by not subjecting them to partisan speeches, effectively using them as stage props. While that tradition has faded in recent years, we’ve never seen anything quite like this. Then again, Trump has never been much for the conventions and norms of the office.
another felon speech, another day ending in Y
Someone should have ordered him to remove that asinine cap.
And after all that he didn’t even stay to shake their hands. He really doesn’t give a shit about them, except as props.
@Mikey:
Hold on. That might have been a favor. Had he shaken hands with all the graduates, the global supply of hand sanitizer would have been greatly strained.
So so inspirational…I hope everyone was able to take notes: “He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife,” Trump said. “Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn’t work out too well, but that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work out. But it made him happy for a little while at least. But he found a new wife.”
@Mike:
Trump would know about trophy wives. They’re the only kind he’s ever had.
Misspeak? Why attempt to sanitize it? He may have deviated frequently (or not at all?!) from the teleprompter text, but there was no reason to think, “oh, he didn’t really mean that,” in that speech.
Solid speech. A+
Gotta warn the military against the dangers of trophy wives.
@Mike:
It can also be circling back to the same point multiple times in a speech.
*certain mental disorders* include frontotemporal dementia.
After the speech, the graduates must be thinking that with this jackass as Commander in Chief, what did I get myself into.
Sometimes I wish I could avail myself of whatever mental device Trump has that allows him to turn off his conscience and behave completely without shame. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go even one day without being ashamed that our country elected this piece of garbage to be POTUS.
@Scott F.: It’s a waste of one’s time and moral energy to be ashamed of what other people do. I can only speak for myself, but I have enough stuff that I’ve done to feel ashamed of without carrying other people’s shame, too.
But if your shoulders are broad enough to take on the extra, God* bless you.
*Or imaginary sky daddy, flying spaghetti monster, or whoever you believe in.
When I was growing up (1970s-80s), there were always jokes about priests and altar boys and just being shuffled around when it was discovered. It was just a part of the culture, everyone knew it, and that was that. And then, around 2000, suddenly it was a big scandal that priests were molesting children. I don’t remember exactly what the turning point was — possibly the Boston Globe reporting as seen in Spotlight, maybe something else was before that.
I keep waiting for that same moment with Donald Trump. At any moment The NY Times could run a page 1 story about Trump’s erratic and unhinged speech at wherever, and how “some people say” he isn’t capable of doing the job, and how “sources close to the President” say what everyone already knows.
People were shocked to discover that Joe Biden was old in 2020, when hundreds of articles suddenly appeared in The NY Times, set the media narrative and changed the country’s understanding.
Trump also neglected to shake the hand of each graduate afterward, flouting precedent. Oh, well. God forbid he, a notorious germaphobe, should be exposed to their cooties.