Hundreds of generals and admirals gathered in Washington on Tuesday (US time) to listen as President Donald Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered sprawling, campaign-style speeches that laid out talking points on cultural issues from the right.
Trump’s remarks at the event, a highly unusual gathering of commanders from around the world, often veered away from military matters. The president trumpeted positions he has assumed on an array of issues, both foreign and domestic.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also spoke at the eventCredit: AP
Addressing an auditorium of impassive uniformed officers, Trump spoke about topics including his deployment of the National Guard to US cities, his relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and nuclear weapons.
Here are five takeaways from Trump’s latest speech.
A familiar list of grievances
Trump frequently mentioned former president Joe Biden. He assailed Biden’s tenure as a failed presidency, using it to emphasise what he views as his successes, particularly the lower number of migrants crossing the southern border.
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Trump used his remarks to raise false claims that Biden’s aides had used autopen to approve pardons and sign executive orders on his behalf without actual authorisation. He criticised the US withdrawal from Afghanistan that occurred under his predecessor and blamed Biden for lower military recruitment numbers — a misleading claim that ignores an increase that began before Trump took office.
The president also falsely suggested that the US military had not operated under a merit system but recruited and promoted “people that were totally unfit” because of “political correctness”.
“The apparatus of our country was not set up for merit,” he said. “It was set up for political correctness.”
Suggestions that troops use cities as military ‘training grounds’
Trump again labelled large coastal cities run by Democratic mayors as “unsafe” and “dangerous” places, where law enforcement officers faced brutal attacks by protesters and “career criminals” roamed for victims. That, he said, was his rationale for deploying the National Guard troops to Washington, Chicago and Portland, adding he would “straighten them out one by one”.
But then he went a step further. The president recounted telling Hegseth that the US military should use those cities as “training grounds” for future wars.
“That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within,” he said. “We have to handle it before it gets out of control.”
Trump’s defiance of military norms — a federal judge in early September said his deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles violated federal law — goes beyond his focus on Democrat-run cities. Over the summer, he ordered the Pentagon to use the armed forces to target drug cartels and help with immigration enforcement.
Disappointment in Russia’s president
Trump and Putin in August.Credit: Bloomberg
Trump expressed deep frustration over the continued war in Ukraine, despite his efforts to broker a peace agreement, including with a one-on-one meeting in Alaska where the president rolled out the red carpet for Putin.
Trump said that he had thought the war in Ukraine would be the “easiest” one to end, but it “turned out to be the hardest” of all conflicts to solve. Trump also called Putin “a paper tiger” for failing to win the war, which began with a full-scale invasion more than three years ago.
“I’m so disappointed in President Putin,” Trump said. “We met in Alaska and had a good meeting. Then he went back and started sending drones into Kyiv.”
Emphasising ‘peace through strength’, dismay at possible nuclear war
Trump repeated his usual lines that the United States was regaining respect from other countries, crediting it to his administration’s willingness to use military options in place of diplomacy, as he did in ordering the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities after talks faltered.
But on Tuesday, he called nuclear weapons “a second n-word” as he warned against the buildup of weapons by China and Russia’s modernisation of its arsenal. The prospect of using such weapons, he said, was “horrendous”. “There are two n-words, and you can’t use either of them,” Trump said. He added that using nuclear weapons on US adversaries “is something we don’t ever want to even have to think about.”
Top brass silent at president’s remarks
Other than some chuckles when Trump tried to crack jokes, nearly all of the generals and admirals listened to the president’s remarks in silence.
There were no loud ovations during his remarks, after senior Pentagon leaders warned the attendees not to react or cheer, in keeping with the norms of the country’s traditionally nonpartisan military.
As Trump spoke, officers sat looking expressionless.Credit: AP
Trump sensed the subdued atmosphere immediately. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he said.
The president then encouraged the generals to “feel nice and loose,” saying that they were “allowed” to applaud, laugh or even get up and leave if they don’t like what they’re hearing — though he joked that then they’d be fired if they left early.
The only applause he received was a muted round of clapping at the end of his 73-minute speech.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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