WEST POINT: President Donald Trump lambasted previous US leaders and policies in a campaign-style speech on Saturday to graduating Army officers, underscoring his determination to remold the apolitical military to his right-wing ideology.

The address to newly minted junior officers at the famed West Point academy in New York featured the annual event’s traditional shout-outs to top students, jokes, and praise for the cadets’ sporting achievements. However, the 78-year-old Republican, who has used the first four months of his second term to attack critics and concentrate power in the White House, quickly turned to edgier topics.

The blistering rhetoric got only muted applause from the rows of grey-uniformed cadets. Justifying his isolationist policies and mistrust of historic US alliances, Trump said that for at least two decades, US leaders have “dragged our military into missions..., wasting our time, money and souls.”

Troops were “led by leaders who didn’t have a clue in distant lands.” Trump also focused on his decision to rid the military of so-called DEI policies, which are meant to encourage participation by racial and sexual minorities in the ranks, including women.

Trump told graduating cadets that his predecessors had been “abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments.” “They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes while leaving our borders undefended,” he said.

“All of that’s ended. You know that,” Trump said. “They’re not even allowed to think about it anymore.” “The job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows,” he said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe, to annihilate any threat to America, anywhere.”

Criticism of US allies

Trump has successfully channeled disillusionment among Americans after the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq triggered by the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

He vowed at West Point that the United States will not attempt to “spread democracy... at the point of a gun.” But his post-9/11-era reset also includes unprecedented scorn for US allies in Europe and Asia, which he again said on Saturday had been cheating the United States.

“They don’t rip us off anymore,” he boasted. Adding to the partisan tone of the speech, Trump wore one of his red election campaign hats throughout and talked up his November victory as a “great mandate” which “gives us the right to do what we want to do.”

Army officers are not allowed to engage in politics and even when Trump paused for applause, the clapping from the cadets was often sporadic. Those invited to speak briefly at Trump’s podium kept their messages strictly personal — not so much as referring to the president. However, the refashioning of the Pentagon, led by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, has caused open unease in some quarters.

Graham Parsons, a professor of philosophy at West Point, resigned this month, saying that the academy had “abandoned its core principles” to comply with White House ideological demands and that he was “ashamed.”

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2025