Trump Gives Commencement Address at West Point, Stressing a New Era
The president said the graduating cadets would enter a service no longer subject to “absurd ideological experiments” or “nation-building crusades.”
By Erica L. Green
Erica L. Green covers the White House. She reported from West Point, N.Y.
May 24, 2025
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.”
Mr. Trump’s crusade against diversity has been particularly pronounced in the military, where there has been an aggressive erasure of the valor of Black people, women and other groups, down to eliminating and obscuring content honoring those buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Mr. Trump spent considerable time praising the achievements of the graduates, telling them that they were graduating in a “defining moment” in the Army’s history.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Mr. Trump has also sought to overhaul the military by making its ranks less diverse. He removed a Black four-star general as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and dismissed high-ranking women. He also banned transgender people from serving in the military.
His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who served in the Army National Guard, has been among the most aggressive champions of Mr. Trump’s campaign. At his first staff meeting, he proclaimed: “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’”
Academics at West Point, a historically apolitical military academy that is run by the Department of Defense, was recently caught in the crossfire of Mr. Trump’s culture war.
To comply with Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Hegseth’s orders, the institution targeted books about race and gender for removal, disbanded a dozen affinity groups, scrubbed curriculums and dropped classes. Faculty members have publicly criticized what they see as a dangerous infringement on the school’s academic freedom, and one even quit.
In his commencement address, Mr. Trump did not address the turmoil on campus directly, but boasted about how he had “liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings.” He also trumpeted how, in his administration, appointments and promotions are not based on politics or identity.
“We’re a merit-based country again,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s remarks drew a stark contrast with the speech he gave when he spoke on the campus during his first term, as the country was in the midst of a reckoning over its racist history following the killing of George Floyd, a Black man whom the world watched cry for his mother as he lay dying under a white police officer’s knee.
In that 2020 speech, Mr. Trump urged West Point’s graduating class to “never forget” the legacy of soldiers before them, including those who had fought a bloody war to “extinguish the evil of slavery.”
“What has historically made America unique is the durability of its institutions against the passions and prejudices of the moment,” Mr. Trump said then. “When times are turbulent, when the road is rough, what matters most is that which is permanent, timeless, enduring and eternal.”
This year, Mr. Trump extolled the starkly different cultural reckoning he was leading.
“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.”
To comply with Mr. Trump’s directives, the academy has targeted books about race and gender for removal, disbanded a dozen affinity groups, scrubbed curriculums and dropped classes.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Mr. Trump also rambled at times as he took shots at his opponents and told stories about his famous golf buddy Gary Player and how the real-estate developer William Levitt came to have a “trophy wife.”
He also spent considerable time praising the achievements of the graduates — he brought several of them onstage — and told them that they were graduating at a “defining moment” in the Army’s history, and were “respected more than any army anywhere in the world.”
Mr. Trump, who never served in the military and avoided the Vietnam War by citing bone spurs in his foot, touted projects that he hoped the new officers would be excited about, including new “brand-new, beautiful planes,” and the Golden Dome missile defense shield initiative that he unveiled earlier this week.
“In a few moments, you’ll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history,” Mr. Trump said. “And 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.”
