West Point, NY (AP) – President Donald Trump Used the first departure address of the Service Academy for his second term on Saturday to issue West Point cadets for their achievements and their career choice while lighting up strongly in a recitation of the campaign of political boasting and long -standing grievances.
“In a few moments, you will have graduated from the most elite military academy and the history of human history,” Trump said at the ceremony at Michie Stadium. “And you will become the largest and most powerful army officers that the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt this army, and I rebuilt the army. And we rebuilt it as if no one had ever rebuilt it before during my first mandate. ”
Dressed in a red hat “Make America Great Again”, the republican president told 1,002 members of the 2025 promotion to the American military academy that the United States is the “warmest country in the world” and underlined an “America First” ethics for the army.
“We get rid of the distractions and we focus our soldiers on his main mission: to crush America’s opponents, kill American enemies and defend our great American flag as if he had never been defended before,” said Trump. He later declared that “the work of the American armed forces is not to host trail -in -law or transforming foreign cultures”, a reference to Drawing shows on military bases This administration of Democratic President Joe Biden stopped after republican criticism.
Trump said the cadets graduated at a “decisive moment” in the history of the army when he accused the political leaders in the past of sending soldiers to “crusades of strengthening the nations to the nations who wanted nothing to do with us”. He said he was cleaning the army of transgender ideas, the “critical theory of race” and the types of training he called division and politicians.
AUDIO AP: Trump’s speech to West Point graduates mixes praise, politics and grievances
The AP correspondent Julie Walker reports that President Donald Trump gives the speech to start at the American military academy.
The previous administrations, he said, “submitted the armed forces to all kinds of social projects and political causes while leaving our defenseless borders and exhausting our arsenals to fight against the wars of other countries”.
Sometimes his remarks were indistinguishable from those heard in a political discourse, his assessment of the country when he left his duties in January 2021 on his examination of last November victory on Democrat Kamala Harris, arguing that the voters gave him a “great mandate” and “it gives us the right to do what we want to do”.
Frequently turning the emphasis on himself, he took over some of his campaign puns, including the assertion that he has faced more surveys than the Gangster Al Capone.
At one point, the crowd listened to Trump, known for his off -message digressions, referred to “trophies” and yachts during an anecdote on the deceased property promoter William LevittA billionaire friend that Trump said lost momentum.
But the president also took the time to recognize the achievements of individual graduates.
He summoned Chris Verdugo on stage and noted that he had finished an 18.5 miles walk during an icy evening in January in just two hours and 30 minutes. Trump had the male button team classified at the national level, which held place n ° 1 for a certain time in the 2024 season, argues and is recognized. Trump also brought the military star of the army, Bryson every dayAt the desk, where the president praised Daily’s “Steel” type shoulder. Trump then used daily as an example to plead in question against transgender women participating in the athletics of women.
In a nod to the presidential tradition, Trump also forgiven about half a dozen cadets who had faced disciplinary offenses.
He told graduates that “you could have done whatever you wanted, you could have gone anywhere”. And that “write your own ticket for the best jobs to Wall Street or Silicon Valley would not be bad. But I think what you do is better. ”
His advice for them understood to do what they like, to think big, to work hard, to cling to their culture, to keep faith in America and take risks.
“It’s an incredible period of change and we don’t need a career officer body and men yes,” said Trump. “We need patriots with guts and vision and spine.”
Just outside the campus, about three dozen demonstrators gathered before the ceremony and agitated miniature American flags. One in the crowd wore a panel that said “supporting our veterans” and “Stop the Cutts”, while others retained the plastic buckets with the message: “Go Army Beat Fascism”.
Friday, Vice-President JD Vance met to promote the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Vance said in his remarks The fact that Trump is working to make sure that American soldiers are deployed with clear objectives, rather than “undefined missions” and “open conflicts” of the past.
Trump pronounced the start address in West Point in 2020, at the height of the COVVI-19 pandemic, when School forced cadets Divide across the country to travel, risking an exhibition on public transport, then landing in New York, a hot point of the coronavirus.
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Swenson reported Bridgewater, New Jersey.