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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Edward Helmore

Trump’s West Point graduation address veers from US-first doctrine to politics

Man in red ballcap salutes
Donald Trump at West Point military academy in West Point, New York, on 24 May 2025. Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters

Donald Trump told graduating West Point military academy cadets on Saturday that they were entering the officer corps at a “defining moment in the army’s history”, in a commencement address that included political attacks and a discourse on the folly of older men marrying “trophy wives”.

Referring to US political leaders of the past two decades who “had dragged our military into missions” that people questioned as “wasting our time, money and souls in some case”, Trump told the young leaders that “as much as you want to fight, I’d rather do it without having to fight”. He predicted that, through a policy of “peace through strength”, the US’s adversaries would back down. “I just want to look at them and have them fold,” he said.

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