A year ago, Joe Biden’s speech at West Point celebrated the American military’s service to other countries. Today, President Trump delivered a speech that made clear that American military exists to serve America, and that it cannot be weakened by woke ideas. The drive-by media were appropriately horrified.
You can read the entire Biden speech here, but the key part, to my mind, was his boasting about what the American military does...for other countries:
As an afterthought, Biden added that the U.S. struck Iran-backed militants after they successfully killed three members of the Army reserve in Jordan, and that, for the first time in a decade, rates of sexual assault and harassment declined.
Donald Trump had a different take when he gave his speech, which can be summed up with this 30-second clip (and do note his “Make America Great Again” hat, which is entirely realistic for those who are prepared to give their lives to America):
"The job of the US Armed Forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, or to spread democracy ... at the point of a gun," says @POTUS.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 24, 2025
"The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America — ANYWHERE, ANY TIME, and ANY PLACE." pic.twitter.com/u1dv6mCAzQ
We know that Trump can and will have military partnerships with other nations if doing so defends the homeland. However, that role—defending the homeland-- works only if the military is a lethal fighting force that kills bad people. That’s the goal. In the same vein, Trump boasted about the military’s lethal defensive weapons, something that should deeply interest those who are going to be officers in that military.
Of course, the speech was also about West Point and the cadets who are graduating, including those whose fathers sacrificed for the nation, and those who were themselves able to do extraordinary things, and the President generously shared time with them.
Less sterling was Trump’s typical self-praise (“You will become officers in 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”), but he’s also right—unlike Biden’s false Annapolis self-praise. The same went for his less-than-gracious sideswipe at Obama for letting military secrets end up in Russian hands, but that’s Trump—and again, it was true.
The draggiest part of the speech came when Trump, trying to urge momentum to the graduates, told a long, discursive story about a real estate titan and his trophy wives. This was not only dull, but leftists correctly noted that there was no way to make trophy wives work in a graduation speech at West Point, even when warning against them.
But, as always, leftists like to get tangled in the inevitable Trumpian weeds so that they can avoid the big points—and the big point was that the American military is for America’s protection, not for social justice. That’s the part that the leftists hate.
Reuters: “At West Point, Trump rips DEI policies in rally-style speech”
President Donald Trump ripped U.S. diversity and inclusion policies, knocked NATO, and took credit for building up the military on Saturday in a campaign-style commencement speech at the prestigious West Point Military Academy in New York.
Trump, wearing a suit and his signature red "Make America Great Again" cap, mixed advice to "work hard" with a list of his top grievances about cultural and political issues while speaking to a stadium filled with cadets, family members and a largely supportive crowd.
(I love that admission at the end about the “largely supportive crowd.” Trump, as always, knew his audience.)
Politico: “Trump MAGAfies West Point”
President Donald Trump addressed West Point graduates in a Saturday morning speech that quickly veered from remarks about American military prowess to what sounded more like a political rally — tying an institution refashioned under his administration’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion policies to his broader political agenda.
In other words, he told the cadets what they are—and are not—fighting for.
And my favorite, the WaPo, which spells out with perfect clarity the West Point it dreams of, versus the West Point of Trump’s presidency:
When President Donald Trump last addressed the graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, protests inspired by the police killing of George Floyd swept the country — forcing a reckoning on college campuses that extended to the storied institution.
Then, school officials directed cadets to spend an academic year exploring how to “unearth and confront racism, sexism, and other biases that persist at this academy and that undermine American society.”
Now, five years later, the academy has banished talk of systemic inequity, abolished student affinity clubs for women and minorities, and instructed faculty to purge terms such as “feminist” and “systemic racism” from syllabi, all at the order of their commander in chief.
Returning to address graduates on Saturday, he arrived at a different West Point: one his administration has swiftly reshaped to reflect his worldview.
“You are the first West Point graduates of the golden age of America,” Trump said, adding later, “We’ve turned it around.”
The Democrats and their media mouthpieces don’t hate it when Trump waffles on about trophy wives; they hate it when he makes America strong. But those cadets who gave their all during four years in West Point must have appreciated greatly being told that they would be defending their country with every resource available, rather than defending other countries alongside sexually confused men in skirts.
