Transcript: President Trump’s Remarks To Top Military Leaders in Quantico

And, you know, sometimes you have to do it.

Settling International Conflicts

I have settled so many wars since we’re here. We’re here almost nine months, and I’ve settled seven. And yesterday, we might have settled the biggest of them all. Although, I don’t know, Pakistan, India was very big. Both nuclear powers, I settled that. But yesterday could be the settlement in the Middle East. That hasn’t happened for 3,000 years. They said, “How long have you been fighting?” 3,000 years. So that’s a long time. But we got it, I think, settled. We’ll see. Hamas has to agree. And if they don’t, it’s going to be very tough on them. But it is what it is.

But all of the Arab nations, Muslim nations have agreed. Israel has agreed. It’s an amazing thing. It just came together. War is very strange, you know. You never know what’s going to happen with war.

The easiest one of them all is Putin. I said, “Number one, it’s a war that would have never happened if I were President. If the election weren’t rigged, if I were President, that war would have never happened. Not even a little chance.” And it didn’t happen for four years. But I knew Putin very well, and I thought that would be easy because I know him so well. Well, that one turned out to be the hardest of them all. We had some that were not settlable, and they all got settled.

So if this works out that we did yesterday with the Middle East, then that’s more than a war. That’s lots of wars. That’s all combined. That’s a lot of wars. Many of you were over there in many different capacities in many different countries. That’s a big part of the Earth. But if that works out, it would be eight-plus. I’d give myself two or three for that one. And then we just have the one to settle, and we have to settle it up with President Putin. And Zelensky’s got to get them together and get it done.

Strength as the Path to Peace

But the only way we can do that is through strength. I mean, if we were weak, they wouldn’t even take my phone call. But we have extreme strength. We had the horror show in Afghanistan, which is really the reason I think that Putin went in. We had that horror show by Biden and his team of incompetent people. And that showed. I think it gave them a path in. I wasn’t there any longer. I watched that. It was so, so horrible. I think it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.

And now we’re back. That’s it. We’re not going to have any of that crap happen, I can tell you. That was terrible. So terrible.

Reawakening the Warrior Spirit

Together, we’re reawakening the warrior spirit. And this is a spirit that won and built this nation. And from the cavalry that tamed the Great Plains to the ferocious and yielding power of Patton Bradley and the great General Douglas MacArthur, these are all great men in this effort. We’re a team.

And so my message to you is very simple. I am with you. I support you. And as President, I have your backs 100 percent. You’ll never see me even waver a little bit. It’s the way it is. And that includes our great police officers and firemen and all of these people that are doing so well.

Together, over the next few years, we’re going to make our military stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer, and more powerful than it has ever been before.

I rebuilt our nuclear, as you probably know. But we’ll upgrade that also and just hope we never have to use it. We have to hope we never have to use it because the power of that is so incredible. I see things. I don’t think they show it to you. I really want to show it to you. But when you see the result of what’s left, you never want to use that. Never, never, ever.

We were a little bit threatened by Russia recently. And I sent a submarine, nuclear submarine, the most lethal weapon ever made. Number one, you can’t detect it. There’s no way. We’re 25 years ahead of Russia and China in submarines. Russia is actually second in submarines.

Third, but they’re coming up. They’re way lower in nuclear too, but in five years they’ll be equal. They’re coming up, and you don’t have to be that good with nuclear. You could have one-twentieth what you have now and still do the damage that would be horrendous. But I announced that, you know, based on his mention of nuclear. And it was really a stupid person that works for… I mentioned the word nuclear. I moved a submarine or two. I won’t say about the two over to the coast of Russia just to be careful, because we can’t let people throw around that word.

I call it the N-word. There are two N-words, and you can’t use either of them. You can’t use either of them. And frankly, if it does get to use, we have more than anybody else. We have better. We have newer. But it’s something we don’t ever want to even have to think about. But when somebody mentions that, that submarine started immediately thereafter, and it’s just lurking. But I’m sure we’re not going to have to use it, but it’s an amazing, it’s undetectable, totally. Ours is. Theirs isn’t. There’s a totally detectable. We can detect them easily. We go right to the spot. But we have a genius apparatus that doesn’t allow detection. It doesn’t allow detection at all by anybody, above water or below water. It’s incredible. We’re way ahead of everybody in that and other things.

Record Recruitment and Morale

As a result of the exciting renewal of the spirit of our own forces, and that’s what it is, it’s really reaching in spirit unprecedented heights over the past eight months. New enlistments, I’m so proud of this, have surged to record highs, the highest we’ve ever had. And we used to have recruiting shortages, if you remember, about a year and a half ago. I was at the beginning stage of a campaign and things came out that you couldn’t get people to join the armed forces. And by the way, the police officer, fire department, I always put the fire department in because they’re great. They’re great, and I got 95% of their vote too. That helps. When you get 95% of their vote, you always have to mention them. But they’re great and they’re brave.

In our inner cities, which we’re going to be talking about because it’s a big part of war now, it’s a big part of war, but the firemen go up on ladders and you have people shooting at them while they’re up in ladders. I don’t even know if anybody heard that, but I said don’t talk about it much, but I think you have to. Our firemen are incredible. They’re up in one of these ladders. It goes way up to the sky rescuing people, and you have animals shooting at them, shooting bullets at firemen that are way up in death territory. You fall off that ladder, it’s over. It’s over. They don’t even have to inspect you when you hit the ground. And you have people shooting bullets at them in some of these inner cities. We’re not going to let that happen. So I always mention the firemen because that’s actually a big problem we have. They are unbelievable, like you. They’re unbelievable people.

For the first time on record in 2025, the Navy, Air Force, and Space Force all met or surpassed their recruiting goals three months early. That never happened before. And the Army did even better. Congratulations, Army. They met everything, and these were the highest standards because we’re making it larger. So these were much higher standards than you had four years ago, three years ago, during the sleepy Joe Biden year. And the Army did it four months early. And you remember a year and a half ago they said big stories that were way behind with the Army, Air Force, the Navy, the Marines were way behind, Coast Guard, and even Space Force.

I love Space Force because that was my creation. You know, when you create something, I love it. And the people we put in there were good. I got that right. We put in great people initially, and we really dominated. We really dominate in that sphere now. We were way behind China and Russia, and now we dominate. Space Force turned out to be a very important thing. I said from the beginning, you know, when Biden came into office, he wanted to terminate. He said, “and this thing called Space Force, so we could get rid of that.” And he got hammered by the people in this room for even suggesting it, because it’s very important, one of the most important. And as time goes by, it’ll get more and more important.

But we’re now at 106% of our recruiting targets for the year, and that’s the best in far more than a generation. And for the Marines, morale is so strong that the Marine Corps will meet its 2026 retention targets before the end of October, which never happens. And that’s the earliest it’s ever happened in the history of our country. And it makes you feel good, you know? I felt guilty. I’d go make a speech in front of, never people like you, you are the leaders, but people, soldiers, and I felt embarrassed because there’d be stories about, you know, you couldn’t, we couldn’t fill up our Army, Navy, Air Force. We couldn’t fill them up, and it was headlines, his headlines. It was during Biden’s four years, the auto pen. I call them the auto pen.

The Importance of Presidential Signatures

It’s how would you like to have your thing signed by an auto pen? You know, when I have a general and I have to sign for a general, because we have beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper, I said, “throw a little more gold on it. They deserve it. Give me, I want the A paper, not the D paper.” We used to sign a piece of garbage. I said, “this man’s going to be a general right here. I don’t want to use this. I want to use the big, beautiful, firm paper. I want to use the real gold writing when you talk about the position.” And they’re beautiful.

But how would you like to have that where you, some kid sitting in the back office is having it signed with an auto pen? I thought about it, and I thought about you people first, admirals, generals. I said, somebody works his whole life. He gets into maybe the academies or wherever, but however you got there, and you go through years of work, and now you become an admiral or a general or whatever. And when you do, the President of the United States just signs your commission, as you know, and that commission is beautifully displayed. And I signed it. Actually, I love my signature. I really don’t, everyone loves my signature. But I signed it very proudly. And I always think of myself, how can you have an auto pen sign this? It’s just so disrespectful to me. It’s just totally disrespectful. And it turned out that almost everything he did was signed by auto pen, except for what he gave his son Hunter pardon. He signed that one. And that’s actually the worst signature I’ve ever seen. That was the bed, the auto pen looks much better.

Commitment to Military Dominance

But as leaders, our commitment to every patriot who put on the uniform is to ensure that American military remains the most lethal and dominant on the planet, not merely for a few years, but for the decades and generations to come, for centuries. We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us, and so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us.

And we’ve had it recently. I had India and Pakistan were going at it, and I called them both. And in this case, I used trade. “I’m not going to trade with you.” Used to, two nuclear nations, big nuclear. “No, no, no, you cannot do that.” I said, “yes, I can.” You go into this freaking war that I’m hearing about, you know, actually they just shut down seven planes. Seven planes, it was starting. There’s a lot of bad blood. And I said, “you do this, was not going to be any trade.” And I stopped the wars. It was going, it was raging for four days, but that was just the beginning. And we stopped it. Was a great thing.

And the Prime Minister of Pakistan was here, along with the Field Marshal, who’s a very important guy in Pakistan. And he was here three days ago. And I didn’t even realize it as beautiful as he said it, but he said that to a group of people that were with us, two generals, but a group. He said, “this man saved millions of lives because he saved the war from going on.” And that war was going to get very bad, very, very bad. President Trump saved millions and millions of lives. That was a bad war. And I was very honored. I loved the way he said it. Susie Wiles was there. She said that was the most beautiful thing. But we saved a lot of them. We saved a lot of them.

Even in Africa, we saved the Congo with Rwanda. They’ve been fighting for 31 years, 10 million people dead. I got that one done, and very proud of it. So if this works out, we’ll have eight, eight in eight months. That’s pretty good. Nobody’s ever done that. Would you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it, they’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing. They’ll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took to solve the war. So he’ll get the Nobel Prize. Will go to a writer now. But well, let’s see what happens, but it would be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that.

I don’t want it. I want the country to get it. They should get it, because there’s never been anything like it. Think of it. So if this happens, I think it will. I don’t say that lightly, because I know more about deals than anybody. This is what my whole life was based on. And they can change, and this can certainly change. But we have just about everybody. We have one signature that we need, and that signature will pay in hell if they don’t sign. I hope they sign for their own good, and we create something really great. But to have done eight of them is just like such an honor.

And then we have Putin and Zelensky, the easiest one of them all. I said, that one I’ll get done. I thought that was going to be first. The others are much harder, some of them. Azerbaijan, this was going on for 36 years. They said, “It’s not solvable, sir. You can’t. Don’t do it.” I said, I will do it. I will do it. And then I got on the phone with the two countries. They were great. They were great. I knew immediately. I knew as soon as I started talking to them, we’re going to solve that war. We did. Now they’re so happy. Now they’re friends.

One said he’s been president for 32 years, 22 years. He said, “You know, for 22 years, I did nothing but kill his people.” They were in the room together at the Oval Office. And they started off spread like this at the beautiful Resolute Desk. And one was here and one was here. You couldn’t get further away. That’s the furthest I’ve ever seen two people in front of me. And as the hour went by, they got closer, closer, closer. And at the end of the hour, we had it done. And they hugged and hugged and hugged. And I said, “That’s so nice. And you’re going to remain friends.”

And I spoke to them, one of them the other day. He said, “No, he’s now my friend.” And for 22 years, he’s been the head of Azerbaijan for 22 years. And the other guy, great guy, too, seven. And you know, that war, that was a war that was not solvable, he said, for seven years. The other one said, “For 22 years, all I did was kill his people. That’s all I’ve done.” I said, “Well, we’re going to put a stop to that.” So we solved that. So it’s a great thing. It’s a great feeling. You know, you’re saving Kosovo and Serbia. You’re saving so many lives doing this, if you can do it.

But our people deserve nothing less than the very best. And we’re never going to let them down. And if we can solve wars instead of you having to fight wars, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Restoring Merit and Economic Strength

That’s why one of the first executive orders I signed upon taking office was to restore the principle of merit. That’s the most important word other than the word tariff. I love tariffs. Most beautiful word. But I’m not allowed to say that anymore. I said, tariff is my favorite word. I love the word tariff. You know, we’re becoming rich as hell. We have a big case in front of the Supreme Court, but I can’t imagine, because this is what other nations have done to us. And we have, you know, great legal grounds. But you still have a case. It would be very bad if something happened.

But I said, my favorite word in the English dictionary is the word tariff. And people thought that was strange. And the fake news came over, and they really hit me hard on it. They said, “What about love? What about religion? What about God? What about wife, family?” I got killed when I said tariff is my favorite word. So I changed it to now my fifth favorite word. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that. But they hit me hard. But it is. I mean, when you look at, we’ve taken in trillions of dollars. We’re rich. Rich again. And there’ll never be, when we finish this out, there’ll never be any wealth like what we have.

Other countries were taking advantage of us for years and years. You know that better than anybody. And now we’re treating them fairly. But the money coming in is, we’ve never seen anything like it. The other day, they had $31 billion that they found, $31 billion. So we found $31 billion, and we’re not sure from where it came. A gentleman came in, a financial guy. I said, “Well, what does that mean?”

He said, we don’t know where it came. I said, check the tariff shelf. No, sir, the tariffs haven’t started in that sector yet. I said, yes, they have. They started seven weeks ago. Check it. Comes back 20 minutes later. Sir, you’re right. It came from tariffs, $31 billion. That’s enough to buy a lot of battleships, Admiral, to use an old term.

Considering the Return of Battleships

I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way. You know, we have a Secretary of the Navy came to me, because I look at the Iowa out in California, and I look at different ships in the old pictures. I used to watch Victory at Sea. I love Victory at Sea. Look at these admirals. It’s got to be your all-time favorite, black and white. When I look at those ships, they came with the destroyers alongside of them, and, man, nothing was going to stop them. There were 20 deep, and they were in a straight line, and there was nothing going to stop them.

And we actually talk about, you know, those ships. Some people would say, no, that’s old technology. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s old technology, when you look at those guns. But it’s something we’re actually considering, the concept of battleship, and they’re six-inch sides, solid steel, not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. It starts melting as the missile’s about two miles away. Now, those ships, they don’t make them that way anymore. But you look at it, and your secretary likes it, and I’m sort of open to it. And bullets are a lot less expensive than missiles, a lot of reasons. I should take a vote, but I’m afraid to take that vote, because I may get voted out on that one. But it’s something we’re seriously considering. There were powers. There were big powers. They were just about as mean and scary as you could be, and so we’re looking at that.

Supreme Court Decision on Merit

One of the biggest cases that we won was the decision of the United States Supreme Court to allow us to proceed on the word merit. Merit. So those two words are right up there. So this is, I would say, the opposite of — you asked for a definition — the opposite of political correctness. We went through political correct, where you had to have people that were totally unfit to be doing what you’re doing, for many reasons. I won’t get into them. But for many reasons, they were unfit. Now it’s all based on merit. That was such an unbelievable decision. I didn’t expect we were going to win that one.

We went in. We said we needed it. We went in for colleges, you know, where kids with a C average are getting into the best colleges, and the kids with A averages won’t get in, and kids with the highest boards and the highest marks or the best marks couldn’t get into the best schools, and people that had not good boards and not very good marks — I mean, OK, but nothing special — they were getting into our best colleges. I said, this is just crazy. We can’t run — you can’t run a country like this. But it was lingering for years, and it got to the Supreme Court, and we won that decision. Merit. Everything is based on merit.

You’re all based on merit. We’re not going to have somebody taking your place for political reasons because they are politically correct, and you’re not. We take the people that are going to do the best job. That’s all. It’s very simple. And that’s the way our country was built. We were built on merit. We got away from it for a long time, and everyone understands it. And it was done. It was approved. I give great credit to the Supreme Court because I thought they had tremendous courage. I didn’t think they’d do that. That was tremendous. I give maybe for that decision almost more than anything, because it’s a hard decision to make. It’s really hard. The apparatus of our country was not set up for merit. It was set up for political correctness. And you can never be great if you’re going to do that. And we’re going to be greater than we ever were before.

Focus on Fitness, Ability, and Strength

We’re bringing back a focus on fitness, ability, character, and strength, and that’s because the purposes of American military is not to protect anyone’s feelings. It’s to protect our republic, and it’s the republic that we dearly love. It’s to protect our country.

We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom, and we will be a fighting and winning machine. We want to fight. We want to win. And we want to fight as little as possible. You have to count on people like me to keep you out of wars, because we don’t want to go into wars. Many of the wars that I just told you about, we could have entered those wars and settled them in a different way, lose a lot of our troops. And we’re going to settle them, I guess, differently. Maybe not, actually. You might not have been able to settle them. We just would have been in the middle of a lot of firepower. But when we do need it, you’re going to be so ready. And you know it.

Military Investment and Modernization

But very importantly, with that goal in mind, I’ve committed to spending over $1 trillion on our military in 2026, and that’s the most in the history of our country. One trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money. I hope you like that, ma’ams and sirs, I hope you like it. That’s a hell of a lot of money. We have the best of everything. Each branch is seeing major investments.

And as I announced in the Oval Office in March, we are rapidly moving forward with the first-ever sixth-generation fighter jet. I didn’t name it. I did not name it. Boeing came in, and they said, “Sir, this is our submittal. It’s the greatest fighting jet ever done.” And, you know, they’re testing all these planes that all the companies are testing. And this one tested, like, through the roof. And they said, “We’d like to name it the F-47.” I said, “All right, let me think about it.” Then, after thinking for about two seconds, I said, “Okay.” You know, that means 47. I’m 47. So I’m 45, 46, and 47. You know, if you think about it. I just don’t want the credit for 46. I don’t want to have their open borders and people coming in from all over the world, including jails and mental incidents. I don’t want that on my record. But I like having it.

Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense

We’re investing tens of billions of dollars in modernizing our nuclear deterrence capabilities like never before. And we’ve begun construction on what we call the Golden Dome Missile Defense Shield. It’ll be the most sophisticated in the world. You watched it do well until they had some problems at the end with a little bit of a lack of ammunition, defensive ammunition. But they’ve got that taken care of. But I tell you, what we’re doing is so good, and we deserve it. You know, we help other countries with it. We don’t have it ourselves.

And Canada called me a couple of weeks ago. They want to be part of it. To which I said, “Well, why don’t you just join our country? You become 51, become the 51st state, and you get it for free.” So I don’t know if that made a big impact, but it does make a lot of sense. It actually makes sense because they’re having a hard time up there in Canada now because, as you know, with tariffs, everyone’s coming into our country. We have more investment than we’ve ever had before, $17 trillion coming in. As an example, in four years, Biden didn’t have $1 trillion. We have $17 trillion, more than that, in eight months coming in. And they’re coming in from Canada, Mexico, from Europe, from all over. AI, auto plants. Everybody’s coming back to the United States.

Naval Expansion and Shipbuilding

Under my budget, we will be expanding the U.S. Navy by at least 19 ships next year, including submarines, destroyers, assault ships, and more. And it’s going to be much more than that as we go along, because we basically don’t build ships anymore. We do build submarines, but we don’t build ships. Do you know, in the Second World War, there were freighters and different types, but we were doing a ship a day, and now we don’t do ships. And I’m not a fan of some of the ships you do. I’m a very aesthetic person. I don’t like some of the ships you’re doing aesthetically. They say, “Oh, it’s stealth.” I say, “That’s not—that’s an ugly ship. It’s not necessary in order to say you’re stealth.”

By the way, the B-2 bombers were incredible. That is stealth. They went into that. I was with General Cain and Pete were in the, we call it the war room. But we’re watching them go in, and they were totally untouched. They were not seen.

They were literally not seen. They dropped their bombs. They hit — every single one of them hit its target. It was total obliteration. CNN, when we came back — fake news, CNN — oh, their camera just went off. You know, their camera — every time I mention they turn their camera up, because it’s never good, they say, this is a problem. But I don’t blame them. You’re better off keeping it on.

But they have some scammer reporter who started saying, without any knowledge, that he may not have hit the targets as well as they thought. It may not have been obliteration. He did hit the targets, and I got to give us a little credit, right? It was obliteration, it turned out. The Atomic Energy Commission said it was obliterated.

They — not only did they hit the target, they had these chutes. You can think of this here. Way up in the sky, there was no moon. It was dead dark. You couldn’t see a thing. You couldn’t see them. But they had, I guess, a beam going right into these chutes. Every single one of those bombs went right down those chutes into a granite mountain. I think it’s the last time they’re going to build air chutes. They had these air chutes that were nice, beautiful. They were meant for us. But it was total obliteration. And now they give us credit for that.

But these people were phenomenal. I tell you, for the Air Force people here, you can be very proud. That B-2, we just ordered a lot of new ones — new ones and updated ones. But I’d be — I’d take the other ones, let me tell you. They couldn’t have worked any better.

B-2 Mission Details

So they flew for 37 hours total, back and forth. No stops, no nothing. We had 52 tankers loading them up. And that’s a job I wouldn’t necessarily want too much. Flying a tanker, load it up with hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. I don’t know if I’d do that job, Jeff. I ask the question, what happens if it gets hit? Sir, you don’t want to know about that, right? I don’t want to know about that.

But those guys, they’re just heroes. They’re incredible. I had them all to the Oval Office. We had the B-2 pilots and a lot of the people — even the people that took care of them, the maintenance people, just as important. We had them all to the White House, gave them a big party on the lawn, brought some of them into the Oval Office.

Military Pay Raise

But on top of all this, we’ll deliver a hard-earned pay raise of 3.8 percent to every soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, Space Guardsman, and Marines — something you weren’t getting from the past administration. They did not treat you with respect. They’re Democrats. They never do.

Not only are we rebuilding our great strength, but for the first time in years, my administration is actually using that strength to defend the core and vital interests of America. And, very simply, we are putting America first. And I have since I’ve been elected. I’ve always put America first. It’s sort of simple, you know, when you think. It’s — my campaign was run on common sense, and we did great.

Election Victory

We got the highest numbers ever received. In terms of districts, you know, they have it broken up — 2,500 versus 525. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote. We won everything. We won everything. You have to take a look at the map. It’s almost entirely red, except there’s a little blue line on each coast. And I think that’s going to disappear, too.

We did really great. And part of it is because of our success with the military, the rebuilding of the military, the vote that I got from the military. And they were — they’re vicious people, you know, that we have to fight, just like you have to fight vicious people. Mine are different — a different kind of vicious.

But they spread all these horrible — you know, they made up statements and said what I said about everything, but even about the military. But fortunately, the military didn’t believe it. It’s hard. You know, they make up a statement and they said, you see, we had 25 people that said he never said that. Twenty-five. We had 25 affidavits. And they said, “Well, we’re going with it anyway.” You know, these sleazebags — you know, that’s why the press is really losing all power, because people aren’t believing it.

We need an honest press. We need borders. We need borders. We need an honest press.

We need fair elections. I mean, those three things. And we don’t have an honest press. We have a really corrupt press. But we fight through the corrupt press. And the people understand. You have to do this stuff a lot. You have to go on television a lot because you can’t get a fair shake if you’re going to rely on somebody else. They just — they don’t understand. They’ve destroyed — the image of media now is at the lowest point it’s ever been. It’s lower than Congress. Can you believe that? That’s something.

Defending the Homeland First

But together, with many of you in the room, we’ve brought back the fundamental principle that defending the homeland is the military’s first and most important priority. That’s what it is. Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia while America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within. We’re stopping it very quickly.

After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help, we’re defending the borders of our country from now on. We’re not going to let this happen. Biden let people come in from prisons, mental institutions, drug dealers, murderers. You know, we had 11,488 murders allowed into our country by this guy who had no clue. He had no clue. He shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but he had no clue. The people that ran the office, the White House, were people that surrounded him. Radical left lunatics that are brilliant people, but dumb as hell when it came to policy and common sense.

And they allowed people from all over the world, from the Congo. They opened up prisons in the Congo. They came into our country totally unmatched, unvetted, unchecked. And from all over South America, not just South America. You know, you think South America now, but from all over, a lot came in from Venezuela. Venezuela emptied its prison population into our country. That’s why they have Trinidad, one of the worst gangs ever. But we took care of them. We took good strong care of them.

Cleaning Up Washington DC

And I just want to thank the National Guard in Washington DC. It’s embarrassing to say this now. I can’t say it because we solved it, but Washington DC was the most unsafe, most dangerous city in the United States of America, and to a large extent beyond. And beyond that, you go to some, you go to Afghanistan, they didn’t have anything like that. You go to countries that you would think there’s problems. And now Washington DC, after 12 days of serious, serious intensity, we took out 1,700 career criminals. If you have five career criminals, they can make your numbers look very bad because they’ll commit many crimes a day. But we took out 1,700, and they took them out. There was no doubt who the boss was.

They did an unbelievable job. Then they started even cleaning. I said, “I don’t want them doing that.” “Sir, they wanted.” They were cleaning it up. I drove through in two days. It was beautiful. People are walking down the street holding hands, man and wife coming from Iowa. They’re not worried about being shot. Washington DC is now a safe city. In fact, I went out to dinner with my crew, and I haven’t done that. I wouldn’t do it, and I felt totally safe. And nobody’s been attacked, nobody’s been hurt. Washington DC went from our most unsafe city to just about our safest city in a period of a month.

We had it under control in 12 days, but give us another 15, 16 days. It was perfect. And people, other than politicians that look bad, do they think, you know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that.

But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.

Controlling the physical territory of our borders essential to national security. We can’t let these people in. You know, we had no people enter in the last four months. Zero. Even I can’t believe that. You know, we had millions coming in, pouring in, 25 million all told. And of those 25 million, many of them should never be in our country. They would take their worst people and their people from prisons and jail, and they put them in a caravan and they’d walk up.

CNN was interviewing one person. “Oh, why are you coming?” “I want freedom.” “Good. Were you in jail?” “Yes.” “For what?” “Murder.” You had to see this anchor, a young woman. She’s like, I couldn’t believe. She’ll probably lose her job, but because the left doesn’t want to hear that. But we’re running it based on common sense and based on love of our country.

But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It’s really a very important mission. And I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago version. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor, stupid. They threw him out of his family business. He was so stupid. I know the family. He becomes governor. He’s got money, not money that he made, but he ran for governor. He won, and now he criticizes us all the time.

Last week they had 11 people murdered, 44 people shot. The week before that they had five people murdered, 28 people shot. Every weekend they lose five, six. If they lose five, they’re considering a great week. They shouldn’t lose any. You shouldn’t lose any. This is civilization. And he’s always up there saying we’re in a very good shape, we don’t need the military. No, they need the military desperately.

Portland and Seattle Unrest

How about Portland? Portland, Oregon, where it looks like a war zone. And I get a call from the liberal governor. “Sir, please don’t come in. We don’t need you.” I said, “Well, unless they’re playing false tapes, this look like World War Two. Your place is burning down.” “I mean, you must be kidding.” “Sir, we have it under control.” I said, “You don’t have it under control, Governor, but I’ll check it and I’ll call you back.” I called it back. I said, “You, this place is a nightmare.” Probably it’s certainly not the biggest, but it’s one of the worst. It’s brutal.

They go after our ICE people who are great patriots, and tough job too. But they love it. They love it because they’re cleaning up our country. And so you look at some of the things where they took over parts of Seattle. They actually took over a big percentage of Seattle. Think of that. You remember that? That was a while ago. And I sent in the troops and they were gone. As soon as I sent them in, oh, when we send in the troops, if you have a real leader that says you got to do what you have to do, I put that out the other day, you got to do what you got to do because we don’t want our people hurt as they stand by.

I was watching during Biden, they were troops standing up like this, brave, standing up at attention the way I should stand all the time. And I’m like this. And people are standing in their mouth, is this far away from them now, and they’re spitting at him. Yes, screaming at him. And that soldier standing there, he wants to knock the hell out of the person, but he’s not allowed to do anything. So they just stand there and they get abused. And a woman was this far away from his face, and she starts spitting in his face, and he’s not allowed to do anything. If it’s okay with you, generals and admirals, I’ve taken that off. I say they spit, we hit. Is that okay? I think so. They spit, as soon as it’s a new thing, they spit, we hit.

How about the cars where the cars are coming out to get brand new cars, Border Patrol, ICE, beautiful, nice new cars, and they’re driving along and have to go through a gauntlet of rocks being thrown at the car. So here’s this beautiful brand new car, by the time it goes a hundred yards, it’s destroyed. These guys have pretty good arms, some of them, and they’re throwing bricks at full force into the window and into the car. It looks like it’s a war zone. And I said, “Never let that happen again. From now on, if that ever happens,” and I said, “Here, you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

It’s those people that are, you can die from that. Those bricks go through the windows, you can die. They’d like it to. They’d like it to go through the window. But this was a couple of months ago. They just kept driving and bricks are hitting the car. And I said, “Why aren’t they stopping?” Because they were under orders from the past administration, never stop. But that’s different with us. We stop. And since I gave that order, we haven’t had that problem. It’s very interesting. It’s amazing.

Drug Interdiction Efforts

It’s just like in Venezuela. You’ve seen the boats going. We can’t find any more boats. They’re carrying drugs, massive. Every boat kills about 25,000 people. That’s what they have. They had fentanyl, mostly, and a lot of other drugs. And we take them out. And we’ve taken out four so, and it’s on air, everybody gets this, not that we like to do that. But every boat kills 25,000 on average, 20 to, some people say more. You know, you see these boats, they’re stacked up with bags of white powder. It’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs too. And now we have a problem. General Kane says, “Sir, there are no boats out there, not even fishing boats. They don’t want to go fishing.” I don’t blame them. There’ll be no fishing today. Yeah, but it’s amazing what strength will do, because what we want to do is stop drugs from flowing into our country. It’s destroying. We lost 300,000 people died last year. Everybody knows friends, many friends probably, that you lost a child or adults too, but you lost a son or daughter because of what’s coming into our border. And we’re making it very hard. Oh, and we haven’t even started yet.

Quick Reaction Force for Civil Disturbances

Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won’t get out of control once you get involved at all. They all joke. They say, “Oh, this is not good.” You saw it in Washington. We had gangs of 10, 12, 15 kids, and there’s military guys, woke up to it, and they treat them with disrespect, and they just got pounded. They just got pounded. The gang just pounded, then thrown into paddy wagons and taken back to their country.

Some are so dangerous we don’t want to even do that because we don’t want to, some of the stone-cold murderers, we don’t have the confidence, even though they’re not coming back very easily. We don’t have the confidence. We’ve put them in jails. But these service members are following in a great and storied military tradition, from protecting frontier communities to chasing outlaws and bandits in the Wild West. And our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic. You know that phrase very well. That’s what the oath says, foreign and domestic. Well, we also have domestic. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, George Bush, and others all use the armed forces to keep domestic order and peace.

Many of our leaders used the military to keep peace. Now they like to say, “Oh, you’re not allowed to use the military.” And you know what the people say? The people in those cities where they’re being raped and shot and beat up, you know, they say we love the military. You ever see where they interview the people on the street? I’ve never seen somebody say they don’t, unless they’re radical and paid off, because a lot of these insurrectionists are paid by whether Soros or other people, but they’re paid by the radical left.

So today I want to thank every service member, from general to private, who has bravely helped us secure the nation’s capital and make America safe for the American people. It’s amazing. The whole world is watching. Everybody in the White House, they come up to the young women. “Sir, thank you.” I know immediately what they’re thinking. They don’t have to say it. They walk to work now to the White House. We haven’t had a crime in Washington in so long because we got the careers. We call them the careers. We got these lunatics out. And they’ll never be any good. You know, I hate to tell this to the liberal media. You could spend time with them. You could do whatever you want. You could send them to the finest schools, which they couldn’t get into anyway. Mentally, they couldn’t get in. But no matter what you do, they’ll never be good. They’re bad. They’re career criminals who, I don’t know, maybe they were born that way. Some people don’t like me to say that, but maybe they were. Certainly somewhere.

Combating Cartel Threats in the Western Hemisphere

Together with the leaders here today, we’re also restoring a needed focus on defeating threats in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout this region, cartel terrorists have been allowed to wager relentless campaign of death and destruction on our country, all because we had weak leadership on top. And we did a great job with it first term, but this is something else, what we’re doing now. We’re taking it to the next level, probably next level times three. But we had COVID come up and we had to take care of that. We did a great job with COVID. We had the therapeutics, it’s just Regeneron, so many things we did for COVID. But we had to focus on that, and every other country in the world was being decimated by COVID. So we had to change gear a little bit to take care of that.

But under our leadership, the military is now the knife’s edge and combating this sinister enemy. We have to put the traffickers and cartels on notice, and we’ve done that. And we put them, a lot of them, we’ve called them a terrorist organization, which is actually a big thing to do. Nobody’s done it, but I’ve done it with a lot of them. It gives you a tremendous advantage. If you try to poison our people, we will blow you out of existence, because that’s the only language they really understand. That’s why you don’t see any more boats on the ocean. You don’t see any boats around Venezuela. There’s nothing.

As president, I will never hesitate to defend our people from threats of violence, from the horrible plague that’s taking place from within, the Iran nuclear power, the Iran, all of the great power that we thought existed. We blew it out to kingdom. We took advantage of it, and we just really took advantage of it. It was a beautiful thing to see. And that’s what military power can achieve. That’s why I chose Raisin Kane. He’s fantastic, by the way. I hope you all agree. If anybody disagrees, could I please have your hand? Who disappears at Raisin Kane is no good? Just raise your hand. I don’t see any hands raised. All right, that means you’re okay. That means that he’s okay now.

But I saw his results. You know, he took out ISIS. I was told it was going to take four years. It took four weeks. I went to see him and he took him out in four weeks, knocked him out, knocked him to hell. And I was told by military people it was going to take four to five years to do it, and I don’t even know if we’ll have it then. Sir, these were the Washington generals. I call them the television generals. But Raisin Kane did it in four weeks, took out 100% of the ISIS caliphate. As a result of these actions and many others since my inauguration, we’re witnessing the triumphant return of peace through strength. We have great peace through strength. America is respected again as a country.

Respect and Leadership on the World Stage

We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day the guy’s falling downstairs. He said it’s not our president. We can’t have it. I’m very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs. For like, I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very, I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having, you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down. But don’t pop down the stairs.

So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would pop down those stairs. I’ve never seen, he’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on. I said it’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen. And it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president.

A year ago we were a dead country. We’re dead. This country was going to hell. We were dead in every way, from immigration to military. We didn’t have the weapons. We’re given everything to, we’re given everything to Ukraine. We had nothing. And by the way, I have to tell you now, as you know, I went over and I met with NATO, and NATO raised from two to five, which everyone said five percent of GDP, millions and now trillions of dollars are pouring in. They didn’t pay the two percent because they know we were there to pay it. And now they paid the five percent. That’s trillions of dollars. And we’re not spending any money on that one, not ten cents. We sell our equipment to NATO. NATO pays us for the equipment and they give it to Ukraine or whoever they give it to that they can keep it, but we’re not involved. We have no money going out. Biden gave $350 billion dollars, not sustainable, $350 billion.

And we have a war that should have never started, but we’re not doing that anymore. So I just want you to know we’re selling equipment. Our people are buying equipment. They’re buying, they are buying the equipment at full price, a fair price. So I don’t want to say we’re making money because I don’t want to say I don’t want to be making money on awards. Too many people dying. They’re losing 7,000 soldiers a week. A lot of them are Russian soldiers, but between the two countries, mostly soldiers, by the way. Sometimes, you know, in Kiev, they’ll lob a missile in, some drones and kill some people. But mostly it’s soldiers. Russia and Ukraine are losing 7,000 souls. And you know, they’re not American. They’re not us. They’re not you or have a special obligation, but they’re soldiers. They’re young people. They leave their parents. They wave goodbye, and then two days later they’re blown up, so unnecessarily. And so that’s the primary reason I want to get it done. We got to get it done. It’s crazy what’s going on. That’s the worst war that there’s been since World War Two. The number of soldiers that are being killed there is just crazy, from five to seven thousand soldiers die a week. Think of that.

So I think we

Think of that, you could be proud of that. And you must have felt like hell when you have a wife or a husband at home and you used to read the numbers that we can’t get people to join the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. You must have felt like, you know, I have a job that nobody wants. That doesn’t feel good. Well, now you have a job that is brimming over with people wanting it. And you’re able to get a much higher quality because now you have your choice. You know, you want so many. And we’re going to have many, many people that aren’t going to be able to join because of the fact that we don’t, you know, we don’t need them at this moment.

But think of it, what a difference that is from, I could just imagine two years ago, you’re reading front page articles in the New York Times, of course, and Wall Street Journal. They always give us unfair stories. But they played it so big. They were playing it so big. Nobody wants to join the Army, the Marines, the Air Force. They don’t want to join. They don’t want to join the Coast Guard at all. Nobody wants to join. Nobody wants to join our police forces, our police forces also. It’s almost went hand in hand. And I used to say, boy, you know, I’m speaking in front of the military today and it’s embarrassing because I’m speaking in front of people who have a job that other people don’t want.

But now you have a job that everybody wants. So I think that has to make you feel good. It’s one of the reasons I love being here today because I wanted to say that. I have to say that everybody wants to be in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. If you think the Coast Guard and Space Force, our beautiful Space Force, it’s a whole different world. And now they’re signing up, by the way, seriously big numbers for the police. Dangerous job, isn’t it? Fire Department. But that’s the paving the way for progress once thought almost impossible.

I mean, a year ago, you wouldn’t have thought that was possible. A year ago, they were talking about making the military smaller because they can’t get the people to join. We’re thinking about making it larger because we have so many people. And it’s nice to be able to cut people because of merit that aren’t really qualified for any reason, a physical reason, a mental reason. You don’t have to take them anymore because you have the pick of the litter and they all want to be with you. They all want your job. They want to be with you. They want to work with you. They’ll even take your job, you know. Got to be a little bit sharp. You got to watch it.

But everybody wants to be doing what you’re doing now. What a difference. When I speak to you and I can say that as opposed to a couple of years ago when I was talking to rooms where they were desperate to get people and they couldn’t get them. What a difference a presidential election can make. That’s all it is. It’s just a presidential election.

Board of Peace for Gaza

Yesterday at the White House, we put forward a plan for peace in Gaza. We announced it and we’re going to create something that was my idea, but unfortunately I got drafted. It’s going to be called the Board of Peace and it’s going to reign over that territory. And we’re going to get that done. And they asked if I’d be the chairman of the Board of Peace. I wasn’t counting on that. I had the idea for the Board of Peace, but I’d said yes. And I guess because of that, every leader, everybody wants to be on the Board of Peace. And we’re going to watch over that very volatile part of the world and keep it non-volatile so you don’t have to get involved.

We want to save you for other things or save you for nothing from that standpoint. We don’t want you fighting wars, but if you have to, you’re going to be, you’re the most lethal fighting force in the world. And I would say that even two, three years ago, but now I say it with great enthusiasm. It’s so true.

Ending the War in Ukraine

And we’re striving tirelessly to end the terrible war in Ukraine. And as you know, we’re also working hard to get the allies to share more of the burden of our defense. Much of that has really already taken place.

But all NATO members have committed to the increase that I talked about. Think of that. That was unthinkable. It used to be 1%. And we got it up to 2 in my last term. And they did not like it. And now we got it to 5. And I get along great with all of them. In fact, they call me the president of NATO. I said, I don’t think so. But they’re great. They’re great people. And they’re spending a lot of, they’re spending a lot of money and a lot of money that they should have been spending in the past. But I think Putin was a wake-up call for them, really.

We’re now selling large quantities of American-made weapons to NATO, and we’re getting really fair pricing. We’re making a lot of money. It’s my hope that from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, our allies will make similar commitments to increase their military capabilities. And this will greatly strengthen our alliances. And also, it will make war far less likely. You know, if you have a strong, if you have a strong presence like we are, we are such a strong presence now.

And I go around bragging about that. I said, we have the strongest military anywhere in the world. I say, you never heard Biden say that. Never heard him say anything. But you never heard him say, did he ever hear him say, we have the strongest military? He doesn’t say that. I say it. We have the strongest military anywhere in the world. We have great leadership. And I’ll tell you, Pete and General Kaine, all of the people that I’ve met that have been lifted up in rank. And we got many of them out of here, too. I’ll be honest with you. Didn’t like doing it, but we got many of you out of here because we weren’t satisfied. We have, we know everything about everybody.

Rebuilding Defense Industrial Base

It’ll also help the United States rapidly rebuild our defense industrial base. Each of you can play an important part in getting allies to do their part. So, to that end, Secretary Hegseth will soon be announcing major reforms to streamline military acquisitions and expedite foreign military sales. We have tremendous numbers of countries that want to buy our equipment. And, you know, in many cases, it takes too long. They’re backlogged. We’re backlogged on all the equipment, which is something that’s new to us a little bit.

And I told those companies, you better get your ass going because we’re, you know, we’re buying, we’re selling you a lot of equipment. We’re getting countries to buy your equipment. You got to produce the equipment. Some of the countries, I’m not going to mention, but some of the countries are buying a lot. And that’s a good thing. They’re on our side 95 percent. I’ll never say 100 percent because it can always turn, right? You know about that. But they’re on our side.

The problem is we have to get the companies that make this equipment. And we make the best equipment in the world, but they got to make it faster. We have orders for the F-35. We have orders for everything. The new F-47, we have orders for everything. They got to make it faster, a lot faster. Ammunition, they have to make faster.

Department of War Identity

In the coming months, we’ll be making even more historic announcements to fully embrace the identity of the Department of War. I love the name. I think it’s so great. I think it stops wars. The Department of War is going to stop wars. If we are as ruthless and relentless as our enemies, the United States Armed Forces will be totally unmatched in the future. We have a group of enemies that are very ruthless and very smart, but they can’t match us. They can’t match us. They don’t even come close to matching us.

Again, you know, it’s very important for me to say we are the greatest military in the world, but we make the best equipment in the world. I watched our anti-missile missiles. I watched our Patriots just knock things out like a needle hitting another needle on the stage. There’s a needle up there, and you send another needle up, and it hits it every time. During the war, we were on 14 for 14. We had 14. This is where they ran. We had 14 missiles coming at us. All 14 were knocked out of the sky, every one of them. We make the best equipment.

From Sparta to Rome, to the British Empire, to the United States of America, history has shown that military supremacy has never been simply a matter of money or manpower.

America’s Military Heritage and Warrior Legacy

At the end of the day, it is the culture, spirit of our military that truly sets us apart from any other nation. Our ultimate strength will always come from the fierce people, the most brilliant people with such pride and the unbending will and the traditions of excellence that have made us the most unstoppable force ever to walk the face of the Earth. And that’s what we are. Remember, we never want to use it, but we have the most powerful nuclear capability, and I call it nuclear deterrent of any other country. Nobody close.

The men and women in this room inherit the legacy built and won by Washington and Jackson, Grant and Pershing, Eisenhower and Patton, Nimitz and LeMay. We carry forward the majestic military heritage passed down from father to son, soldier to soldier, and one generation of warriors to the next. You are warriors. You know that, right? You’re great warriors. Well, you wouldn’t be in this room. You’re the best of the best.

From Concord Bridge to Fort McHenry, from Gettysburg to Manila Bay, from Normandy to Sicily, and from the jungles of Vietnam to the dusty streets of Baghdad, America’s military heritage is charged into hellfire, climbed up jagged mountains, crossed roaring oceans, and thundered across open deserts to defend our flag, our freedom, and our homeland. Nobody does it like you.

Defending America’s Way of Life

Now we are discovering American muscle, reasserting American might, and beginning the next story chapter in American military legends and lore. When it comes to defending our way of life, nothing will slow us. No enemy will stop us. They cannot stop us. And no adversary will stand in our way. They won’t stand in our way. We don’t want them to stand in our way. We don’t want to even put them in that position, but they’re not going to stand in our way ever again.

You’ll never see four years like we had with Biden and that group of incompetent people that ran this country that should have never been there. Because we had the United States military, the best, the boldest, the bravest that the world has ever seen, that the world has ever known. With leaders like we have right here in this beautiful room today, we will vanquish every danger and crush every threat to our freedom in every generation to come because we will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win, win.

Closing Remarks

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want to just thank you once again, and God bless the United States military, and God bless America. God bless you all. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Broadcast Context

ANCHOR: And there we have the remarks by President Trump as he addressed top military leaders there in Quantico, Virginia, speaking for more than an hour, talking about the warrior ethos among other topics as well.

We did want to let you know you’ve been hearing from Secretary Hegseth and President Trump talking about the Department of War. We did want to share with you that while legislation has been introduced in both chambers of Congress to formally change the name, at this point in time, the department’s still officially known as the Department of Defense. So we did want to share that context with you as we were hearing from President Trump and Secretary Hegseth.

You can see that the military leader is now standing at attention as President Trump has exited the stage. And as we continue to take a live look at this, we were anticipating President Trump to be making a major announcement in the Oval Office at 11 a.m. You can see right now.

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