President Donald Trump ranted to a captive audience of graduating West Point cadets about military drag shows, urging the students to focus on killing America’s enemies.
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, but to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” the president said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America anywhere, anytime, and anyplace.”
While college commencement addresses are usually a chance to celebrate the graduates’ achievements, the more than a thousand West Point cadets and their families were treated to a recounting of Trump’s war on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the military.
The president accused previous military leadership of “abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments here and at home.”
“Under the Trump Administration, those days are over,” Trump said. “We are getting rid of the distractions and 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.”
Since returning to office, one of Trump’s top initiatives has been to eliminate what he calls “gender ideology” from the federal government. At the Department of Defense, this has meant ending diverse hiring programs and firing top women military leaders.
“You are the first West Point graduates of the golden age of America,” Trump told the cadets. “This is the golden age. I promise. We are in a new age. This is the golden age. You are going to lead the army to some of the greatness it has never reached before.”
Trump would return to the issue of identity later in the speech, this time railing against “critical race theory”—an academic field of study whose name has been used by conservatives to include teaching about racism generally—and transgender athletes.
“We have liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” the president said. “There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto the brave men and women in uniform—or on anybody else for that matter—in this country. We will not have men playing in women’s sports.”
When Trump paused after delivering these lines, the crowd was nearly silent.
Drag shows at military bases were ended by the Pentagon under the Biden administration in 2023, with a spokesperson telling the Associated Press that they were “inconsistent with regulations regarding the use of [Defense Department] resources.”
