Trump speaks at the West Point

The last time President Donald Trump spoke to the army cadets in West Point, he was established in a dramatic conflict with the American military.

Two days before Trump spoke to the graduates of the academy in June 2020, Army General Mark Milley, the highest military officer of the nation, had an extraordinary television decision that they appeared with the President outside the White House in uniform after security personnel used violence to remove peaceful demonstrators from the scene.

Two weeks before Trump's speech, Defense Minister Mark Esper had an irreparable break with the president when he put Trump's wish to use activated troops to triggered unrest by murdering George Floyd. According to Esper, demonstrators later thought about the shooting: “What played me on that day was deeply concerned about the leader of our country and the decisions he made.” Trump, who denied demonstrators, fired Esper five months later.

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Trump's impulse to react to the military to react to nationwide protests led to a outline of some retired officers who saw what they saw as a presidential crossing. James Mattis, who was the first Minister of Defense of Trump, in particular to trace the president from the decisions that would endanger his catch or undermine US security, condemned Trump's efforts to politicize the military and share the Americans.

That now feels like another era.

When he returns to West Point today to speak today at the beginning of the academy, Trump looks out of little resistance to the Ministry of Defense. Instead, the President has prioritized the perceived loyalty than the experiences in the selection of civilian leaders in the Pentagon. In line with his political agenda of the Maga, he brought the Ministry of Defense into harmony than in his first term and asked questions about who if someone would try to stop him when trying to use the military in an unconstitutional way.

In contrast to Mattis, Milley and Esper, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth – a former soldier of the National Guard with a little management background – was an acceleration for Trump's political priorities. He quickly moved to eradicate military diversity programs, Joe Biden-era decisions about transgender troops and the covid 19 vaccines and the combat standards in a way that could get women out of certain jobs.

Hegseth also has the participation of the US armed forces in the defense against illegal migration, the power of the troops, captured migrants on the southern border, expanded military deportation flights and expanded the camps of migrants in the US base in Guantánamo Bay. Although the military has long been one of the most respected institutions in the country, its reputation has fallen dramatically in recent years, and the US troops in polarizing activities such as police work, which could separate the border to the Americans' armed forces, could further undermine the trust of the Americans.

Like Trump himself, Hegseth took a combative, standard -bustling approach to his leadership of the Pentagon, attacked enemies online, mocked “fake news” media and beats the government's security rules. On Wednesday, he headed a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon Auditorium, an extremely unusual step for the leader of a workforce, which includes more than 3 million people who come from a variety of backgrounds and beliefs.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the general staff of the Air Force Dan Caine, was nominated by Trump after President General Charles Q. Brown, the second black officer, who serves in this role, and had abruptly released other top officers in February. Caine, a respected former officer of the National Guard with fewer command experience than most former JCS chairman, has so far retained a low profile and said little about his views. In his hearing for confirmation, Caine – who denied a story that Trump said about him when he met a military base in Iraq – that he would be willing to be released to follow the constitution. (Other top broth that anticipates Hegseth's movements to tear down the top ranks of the military have tried to keep their heads and avoid controversial problems.)

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The service academies, including West Point and the Naval Academy, are now at the center of the government of the government to redesign the military culture. In response to an order of the White House, which prohibits the teaching of “division concepts” and the references to racism in American history at the academies, managers at schools removed books from library shelves and change the curricula. Sometimes, in the expectation of the preferences of the administration, they also closed student groups in connection with breed, gender and ethnicity, and the speakers and events that they feared violated the new rules.

It is difficult to know how West Point -Cadets feel about all this. The academy has no independent student newspaper and few venues where students can express their views on such topics. Like most service members, cadets usually keep their political beliefs for themselves.

Kori Schake, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told me that Trump undermines the principles of the US military culture, including the apolitical nature and the jury of the institution of the institution towards the constitution and not one person. While the checks from Trump's first term in office are long over, Schake said: “What I see as a continuity from 2020, President Trump, who tries to corrode the good order and discipline of the American military in order to create a much more personal kind of loyalty.”

In his remarks from 2020 in West Point, Trump largely adhered to a typical president and congratulated troops to make it through the hardships of the academy life and to praise the army guides such as Douglas Macarthur and George Patton. Perhaps his current speech will take a similar tone. If this is the case, it will mark a departure from its newer appearances at troop events. When he spoke to Qatar in Qatar this month in Qatar this month, Trump sounded like no other president in a military environment. He criticized “fake generals” that do not adhere to his worldview, the role of allies like France when winning the Second World War, and suggested that he could run for a third term.

Trump praised the service members who gathered around him because he “defended our interests, supported our allies and secured our homeland”.

“And you know what? Make America great again,” he continued. “That happened. It happened very quickly.”