President boasted his administration’s efforts to shut down DEI programs and immigrant crackdown while speaking to West Point’s Class of 2025
At a graduation ceremony where he addressed the 2025 graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, President Donald Trump offered a meandering, politically provocative speech about DEI programs, golf, and Al Capone.
Trump’s Saturday morning speech in West Point, N.Y., lasted more than an hour. The address had initially been intended to be about West Point graduates and their achievements, although Trump quickly veered onto other subjects.
The U.S. military’s commander in chief used his keynote address to emphasize his efforts to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives nationwide. He said he had “liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings” and there would be “no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody.”
It was consistent with a January executive order that aimed to erase transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people from the national consciousness, from government,, particularly, and to cast them as a burden to others.
“The U.S. military’s job is not to host drag shows to wine and dine to convert foreign culture, it’s to kill the enemy and close with the enemy to defeat the enemy for God and country,” he said. “The mission of the military is to destroy an enemy, but in the case of ISIS, we can’t destroy them overnight,’’ he said in one interview.
Earlier this year, in the wake of Trump’s anti-DEI executive order, West Point disbanded several clubs that were based on race, ethnicity and gender. These included the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Native American Heritage Forum, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers Club.
Trump, in a red hat with his political slogan “Make America Great Again,” then continued to extol his administration’s restrictive immigration agenda. This also happens hours after a federal judge ordered the administration to return to Mexico a Guatemalan man it had deported as part of its migrant crackdown, “wrongfully,” as the judge put it, to bring him back for his asylum court hearing.
“We were invaded for four years, and they’ve let people come into our country that should not be; they’re coming here, we’re getting them out and bringing them back from where they came,” Trump said.
“Hopefully, we will get to keep going in court,” he said. “You know, we have the greatest election victory. This was November 5. We won the popular vote by a lot of votes.”
Trump also mentioned some of his preferred famous names, including retired professional golfer Gary Player.
“He’s a pal of mine, he’s a little bit angry with people. He hits the ball this far,” Trump added. He said, ‘I hit the ball farther than them. Why am I small?’ “But man, he worked hard. He was always doing exercise. He was always far ahead of his time. He never stopped.”
Trump then transitioned to describing real estate developer William Levitt, often recognized as the founder of the modern American suburb. Levitt died in 1994.
“He was great at what he did,” Trump said about Levitt. “You see him all over the country, still in Levittowns. That was a long time ago, but he was: he was one of the first of the big home builders, and he got very rich, a very, very rich man, and then he decided to sell.
“And he sold his business, and he had nothing to do. He got divorced, found a second wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I suppose a trophy wife is what we would call that. It didn’t work out too well, but it doesn’t — that doesn’t work out too well, I gotta tell you. A lot of trophy wives.”
The president also mentioned his legal troubles in the past, saying he was investigated more than Al Capone himself. Trump drew this parallel a few times on the campaign trail last year. He also made history last spring by becoming the first criminally convicted former president.
“More than the greatest crime families? Mob bosses, I was investigated,” Trump said to the West Point graduates. “Alphonse Capone was a beast. He was a raw criminal. I was investigated more thoroughly than Alphonse Capone, and I now stand with you as president. Can you believe this?”
Trump left the ceremony just before noon and headed to his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Nearly five years had elapsed since a previous appearance at West Point had resulted in negative news coverage, which Trump reminded his aides about regularly over the years that followed. Following his speech in June 2020, Trump appeared to have difficulty walking down a ramp from the stage, raising concerns about his physical health.