Wearing a red MAGA hat, President Donald Trump said that his election victory means he can do whatever he wants in his commencement speech at West Point on Saturday.
“We had the greatest election victory,” Trump told cadets of the elite United States Military Academy. “This was November 5. We won the popular vote by millions of votes. We won all seven swing states. We won everything.… We had a great mandate, and it gives us the right to do what we want to do to make our country great again, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Although the president loves insulting the military, this time he showered the graduates with praise. He also took credit for creating the military’s strength.
“In a few moments, you’ll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history,” Trump said. “And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term.”
He told the cadets they are “the first West Point graduates of the golden age of America. This is the golden age. I tell you, promise, we’re in a new age.”
Of course, this is not the first time that Trump has laid claim to unlimited power. Trump posted a similar declaration on social media in February. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he wrote on Truth Social and X.
This idea was validated by the Supreme Court last year, when the conservative justices ruled that a former president is entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecutions. At the time, sources told Rolling Stone that a second Trump administration would use this decision as a shield against pesky laws and rules as they sought to implement their policy agenda.
“It’s like Christmas,” a conservative attorney close to Trump told Rolling Stone.
“In every use of official power,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in her dissent, “the president is now a king above the law.”
Just months into Trump’s second term, his administration has disregarded due process rights and orders from judges, including those on the Supreme Court, that it return Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia from his incarceration in El Salvador.
In March, Trump sent hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison system in El Salvador without due process, in defiance of a Maryland judge’s order. This week, a Massachusetts judge found that Trump officials violated his court order — which prohibits the administration from deporting immigrants to third-party countries without due process — as it moved to send a group of detainees to South Sudan, a dangerous and war-torn country.
Over and over again, courts have ruled that the Trump administration’s actions are unlawful. Speaking before the West Point cadets, Trump expressed hope that judges will stop standing in the way and allow him to continue his lawless deportations, framing them as necessary to stop a criminal “invasion” at the border. “It’s not easy, but hopefully the courts will allow us to continue,” he said.
Trump separately praised his record so far as president.
“Our country is doing well,” he told the cadets. “We’ve turned it around, very quickly. We’ve turned it around.”
“I just got back from the Middle East, and I was at, as you know, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. And I will tell you they said, all three leaders, great leaders of those three nations, they all said the same thing: The United States of America is hotter now than we’ve ever seen it, and a year ago, it was as cold as it gets. It’s true. We have the hottest country in the world, and the whole world is talking about it, and that’s an honor for all of us. I cannot wait to see the glory that is still ahead.”
Trump also took aim at critical race theory and transgender people’s participation in sports. Earlier this year, West point disbanded several clubs including the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the Japanese Forum Club, the Latin Cultural Club, the National Society of Black Engineers Cub, the Native American Heritage Forum, and the Society of Women Engineers Club in response to the Trump administration’s executive order to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, or DEI.
“We’ve liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” Trump said. “There will be no more critical race theory or ‘transgender for everybody’ forced onto our brave men and women in uniform, or on anybody else for that matter, in this country. And we will not have men playing in women’s sports.”
He drew attention to West Point’s football quarterback, Bryson Daily: “I don’t think a lot of women want to tackle him. I don’t think so. How crazy is it — men playing in women’s sports? How crazy is it? So ridiculous, so demeaning, so demeaning to women. And it’s over. That’s over. We’ve ended it.”
