Trump Gave a Partisan Speech to Navy Sailors, to Mixed Reactions 6OKT25

5 TIME DRAFT DODGER, c-i-c bone spurs drumpf / trump violates the rules again, this time showing sailors and marines how brave he is by doing so, since he can't point to his military record as a 5 time draft dodger, that would just confuse the issue and he would be forced to lie his way out of that whole situation. Not that lying to our country and the men and women who are committed to defending America even if it requires the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives is a problem for NOT MY pres drumpf / trump. He is very good at channeling hitler when addressing the US Military or the whole nation and too many still suck up all his bull, His problem is more and more Americans are wising up to what he is and his ultimate goal of replacing our democratic Republic with the fascist heritage foundation's project 2025 authoritarian theocratic oligarchy. From the New York Times.....

UPDATE: Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals 25SEP25 & ( VIDEO ) Trump cabinet pick Pete Hegseth hit with new allegations of alcohol abuse and misconduct 3DEZ24 & Defense Department slammed for "cringe-worthy" Pete Hegseth meme 4MAI25

Trump Gave a Partisan Speech to Navy Sailors, to Mixed Reactions

President Trump’s attempts to politicize the military have become more overt as he makes the case for having troops at his disposal in American cities.

By Shawn McCreesh

Reporting from Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia

Oct. 6, 2025

The commander in chief could not contain himself. He did not even try.

He stood on a stage at the end of a long pier and looked out upon a sea of starchy white polyester, neckerchiefs and aviator sunglasses.

“Let’s face it,” President Trump told thousands of U.S. Navy sailors Sunday afternoon, “this is a rally.”

Actually, it was meant to be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Navy, but the president treated the occasion as though it were just another Trump rally, but with better toys (there were aircraft carriers and fighter jets).

He kept veering off script to rail about a “rigged” election and “woke” stuff. There was a group of MAGA true believers who follow him around the country seated by the stage. He called out to them. And he slammed the news media and his Democratic predecessors and inveighed against “transgender for everybody,” which has become his latest over-the-top maxim meant to invoke liberal lunacy.

The scene on Sunday provided the latest look at how Mr. Trump melds his savage partisan politics with his role as head of the armed forces.

His attempts to politicize the military have become more blatant at a time when he is flexing his power over that military in ever new ways. This is a dynamic that has taken on urgent new significance in the past week.

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump sent National Guard troops from Texas to Chicago, against the wishes of the Illinois governor, a Democrat. The president also ordered hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops into Portland, Ore., setting off a showdown with a federal judge who blocked the administration’s moves on Sunday night.

Judge Karin Immergut (who was appointed by Mr. Trump) wrote in her ruling: “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

And on Friday, his administration carried out another strike on what it described as a drug trafficking ship in international waters; these strikes have alarmed a range of legal specialists in laws governing the use of force.

Mr. Trump boasted about the strikes and the troop deployments to the sailors on Sunday. “Now we’re in Memphis,” he said. “And we are going to Chicago.” He talked about how he sent troops into Washington.

“We send in the National Guard,” he told them. “You know what? We send in whatever is necessary. People don’t care. They don’t want crime in their cities.”

Most of the sailors hearing this were quite young. They had come from all over the country to do all sorts of jobs for the Navy on this base in Norfolk. Some of them were fans of this president. Others were not.

In the days leading up to Mr. Trump’s arrival address, one Navy official explained, at least some of these sailors had been spoken to by their superiors, who reminded them that when they joined the Navy, they swore an oath to the Constitution. The military is meant to be nonpartisan. It is not meant to serve one party or political leader or any ideology. It is meant to serve the nation.

This is one of America’s oldest and most sacred democratic traditions, devised by the founding fathers, but it is not one for which Mr. Trump has historically had much time or respect. He almost always behaves as the political animal that he is.

That instinct — that disregard for tradition — was also on display five days earlier, when he was in Quantico, addressing hundreds of top military commanders. Mr. Trump acknowledged then that he understood the commanders were not supposed to clap or laugh or react much. He told them to forget about those old rules. “You just feel nice and loose,” he told them. But they sat mostly stock still as he delivered a partisan speech for 73 minutes.

So he couldn’t crack the brass. Maybe a pier full of youngsters would be easier?

He made one hell of an entrance, landing in Marine One on the deck of an aircraft carrier while the theme song from “Top Gun” blared. A squadron of fighter jets flew low overhead in a tight formation as he spoke his first words — “God bless the United States Navy”— and the sailors roared with delight.

“I think he’s a great president,” said Josie Reyna, a 25-year-old aviation boatswain’s mate from Wyoming. Asked what she thought about Mr. Trump sending the National Guard into cities over the weekend, she replied, “I mean, I know that he just wants to do what’s right.”

Just then, a 37-year-old sailor named Ruben Reed who works in the Navy’s public affairs department, which helped stage the event, appeared and flashed her a warning look.

Mr. Reed proceeded to shadow me through the crowd, monitoring the young members of the Navy as they tried to communicate as best they could what they thought of Mr. Trump without sounding too wildly partisan. Even though their commander in chief had brought politics onto the pier, they knew they were not supposed to talk the way he does.

Megan Rush, a 26-year-old from Lafayette, La., who works as an electrician on aircraft carriers, said she came out to the pier because she’d never seen a president before. What does she make of this one?

“Ummmmm,” she said, pausing for a moment. “I don’t know what to say.”

Mr. Reed piped up. “Are you happy to be here?” he asked, rhetorically.

“I’m happy to be here supporting the Navy,” Ms. Rush said pointedly.

“It’s OK to support the president,” Mr. Reed said slowly. “Its OK to support your president, Donald Trump.”

A trio of baby-faced rescue swimmers standing nearby were far more enthusiastic.

“I just like Trump because of how kind of out there he is, you know, and aggressive,” said one of them, a 22-year-old from Chandler, Ariz., named Alex Guerra. “I love Pete Hegseth, because he’s enforcing strict military standards. I think it’s just going to make the military better. He’s kind of bringing it back to how the old days were.”

The sailors whooped loudest when Mr. Trump promised he’d secure them all back pay after the government shutdown ends and that he would throw in a pay raise while he was at it.

The crowd also liked his talk of the Navy’s “swagger” and “sheer attitude” and how he described state-of-the-art submarines that “prowl” and “strike from crushing depths unseen.” They enjoyed, too, the way he talked about the guts and the glory of “leatherheads” and “jarheads” and “devil dogs” and the epic tales he told about Commodore Sinclair and Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima.

“I like your life better than mine, I have to be honest with you,” Mr. Trump said at one point. “Sailing on those beautiful waters all the time, you’re so lucky.”

But tales of nautical heroism and good old-fashioned patriotism eventually gave way to a litany of vintage Trumpian grievances, which landed with mixed results.

The crowd stared back silently as he complained, implausibly and as he has done many times before, that one year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center he tried to warn the world about Osama Bin Laden, but no one gave him credit for this warning because no one ever gives him enough credit.

He talked about suing The Associated Press. Many sailors laughed when Mr. Trump began to mock former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for falling down steps. And there was some cheering when the president said “we’re not politically correct anymore.” But there were other reactions, too.

When Mr. Trump said that “we are getting ‘wokeness’ the hell out of our military,” one Black woman looked at another with arched eyebrows; they shook their heads as they walked away from the stage toward the other end of the pier. Many other members of the Navy who looked like they’d heard enough slowly followed suit.

It ended a little while later with Mr. Trump dancing onstage to “YMCA,” as he often does at his political rallies. He and the first lady climbed aboard the aircraft carrier, got into their helicopter and disappeared over the horizon. Some of the sailors went back into the ship, and the rest began to shuffle off the pier back toward the base.

Michael Dube, a 36-year-old who works for the chapel as a religious program specialist, was one of them. He went to a Trump rally once years ago and has since watched many of them on television. He said he agreed with the president that the day was a lot like one of those rallies. Which was fine by him.

“It was,” he said, “great as always.”

Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 8, 2025, Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Gives a Partisan Speech to Sailors, to Mixed Reactions. 

 THIS was more a wannabe gang leader's rant than a speech by what is supposed to be the Sec of Defense. He just reinforced that image with his no class FAFO comment that received the lack of appreciation it deserved. He is no leader of men, he would have to become one to lead. He is no defender of democracy, if he was drump / trump wouldn't have picked him for Sec of Defense. He is a threat to the US Military and our democratic Republic. We can only hope and pray if push comes to shove American military personnel remember the oath they took is to the United States and our Constitution, not to drumpf / trump-vance and hegseth. From the New York Times....

Veterans See Costs and Risks in Hegseth’s Military Rewind to 1990

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has identified real problems, veteran officers say, but by looking back 35 years for policy cues, he risks hurting, not helping, military readiness.

By Dave Philipps

Oct. 2, 2025

A ban on beards. A focus on physical fitness, and more protections for unapologetically aggressive leaders. In an unusual speech in front of hundreds of generals and admirals, and in a flurry of memorandums afterward, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined his vision of a tougher and more disciplined military, without what he called “woke garbage” getting in the way.

But former military officers took issue with Mr. Hegseth’s list of policy changes, saying that some of them seemed redundant and others threatened to undermine his goals of increased readiness and lethality.

The secretary focused heavily on personnel matters. In are mandatory shaving, more harrowing basic training and daily physical training for everyone. Out are requirements that protect whistle-blowers from retribution and rules that require formally reviewing past misconduct when screening leaders for promotion.

Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel and former military lawyer who watched the speech, said it seemed “disconnected from reality.”

“The big issues in the military are not with beards and people being out of shape and rampant D.E.I.,” said Mr. Christensen, who after retiring from the military led Protect Our Defenders, a group that protects whistle-blowers.

Mr. Hegseth urged the assembled generals and admirals to apply what he called the “1990 rule,” and scrutinize any changes to training or standards that were made in the last 35 years. “1990 seems to be as good a place to start as any,” Mr. Hegseth told his audience.

It was also the last year before laws that excluded women from combat roles were changed, starting a long process that has led to women serving in nearly every part of the armed forces, including top leadership. And since then, the military has become increasingly diverse as well.

Though Mr. Hegseth issued no new guidelines specific to women, he said all combat troops would be required to meet “the highest male standard only.”

“This is not about preventing women from serving,” he said. “But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is.”

This left a lot of people in uniform scratching their heads, because women who serve in combat roles already have to meet the same physical performance standards as men, and have been required to do so for as long as they have been allowed into those jobs, the last of which were opened to women nearly a decade ago.

Another of Mr. Hegseth’s directives was aimed at excluding from deployment nearly all troops who wear beards, including those with religious exceptions.

He spoke disparagingly about such troops. “No more beardos,” Mr. Hegseth told the assembled generals and admirals. “The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.” He added that if troops “don’t want to shave and look professional, it’s time for a new position or a new profession.”

Sukhbir Toor, a field artillery officer and observant Sikh who retired from the Marine Corps this year, said Mr. Hegseth’s remarks seemed disconnected from military reality.

“I just don’t think he understands what he’s talking about,” Mr. Toor said, “and the way he goes about it is extremely disrespectful.”

Like hundreds of other Sikhs, he was given permission to wear a beard and a turban while in uniform, and has shown he can effectively wear a gas mask with his beard. He said the new restrictions excluding troops with beards from deployment — an important step in earning promotion — would effectively cut short the careers of many observant Muslims and Jews, as well as his fellow Sikhs.

“We have Sikh service members serving right now in artillery, in infantry, in Special Operations, deployed around the world, away from their families,” he said. “We’ve shown we can do the job and we represent the warrior ethos that the secretary is talking about. To hear the secretary refer to us as beardos — to me, it’s appalling.”

To be sure, some of the issues Mr. Hegseth raised in his speech resonated with many in uniform. Shaving exemptions have proliferated, and leaders have been told not to question troops about them, for fear of violating medical privacy rules. Resolving complaints made to inspectors general can take months even when they are not supported by evidence, stalling the careers of the troops involved. And commanders often struggle to fit in all the training programs they have to take on topics like human trafficking and cybersecurity — requirements that Mr. Hegseth said would be reviewed.

“I don’t know how many of those trafficking trainings I sat through, even though it’s something I never dealt with,” said Mr. Christensen, who served in the Air Force for 20 years. “I one-hundred-percent agree that a review of those trainings makes sense.”

Mr. Toor also said Mr. Hegseth was right to call out many of the issues he raised in his talk. As a Marine captain, he encountered onerous training mandates and uneven enforcement of fitness standards, and saw scruffy faces proliferating in the ranks.

“The problems are real,” he said. “But I’m not sure he is going about them in a way that helps. I had really good Marines who, because of a medical condition, legitimately couldn’t shave. Under these rules, I would lose those guys. How is that making our military better?”

Mr. Christensen expressed similar concerns about changes that Mr. Hegseth made to the military’s offices of equal opportunity and inspector general, which investigate reports of misconduct and discrimination. Mr. Hegseth said those offices had been “weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat.”

The new directives mandate that reports be dealt with swiftly, but also allow the military to identify and punish people who make complaints that are determined to be unfounded.

“This is only going to hurt,” Mr. Christensen said. “If you are afraid you’ll be punished for speaking up, just because the allegations couldn’t be proved, it will discourage a lot of people.

Noting that he had seen repeated abuses in his time running a group that protects whistle blowers, he added: “This system is in place for a reason. You only need to go back through recent history to see that complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination and other misconduct were founded.”

Mr. Christensen also found the secretary’s plans to allow drill instructors to be more aggressive during boot camp, and to drop long-established rules that restrict instructors from physically touching trainees, to be puzzling.

“Those rules were created after decades and decades of abuse and assault,” Mr. Christensen said. “I don’t think that will end well.”

Many of the regulations Mr. Hegseth is rolling back were put in place after 1990, as an increasingly diverse military learned to deal with problems like harassment and discrimination. For many troops, the year that Mr. Hegseth has set as his standard was a dark time when sexual harassment went unpunished and women were barred from flying combat missions, serving on many warships or doing other work central to the military’s mission.

“If we went back to the way it was in 1990, I would not have been allowed to do my job,” said Elisa Cardnell, a former Navy officer who served on a destroyer and now runs the Service Women’s Action Network. “Times have changed. We have a lot of women serving in combat, and we have shown that it can work.”

There are now about 10,000 women serving in combat units. The number of women in the most physically demanding Special Operations jobs remains small, in part because the grueling physical standards required of all candidates for those roles are something that few men, and even fewer women, can meet.

Ms. Cardnell said she found it confusing when Mr. Hegseth, who has repeatedly said that he believed women did not belong in combat jobs, demands that the military stop lowering performance standards to make accommodations to women.

“He keeps talking about fixing a problem that doesn’t exist,” she said. “We all are required to meet the same standards. But I’m afraid we are at a point where women just existing in the military has become a political issue.”

A correction was made on 

Oct. 2, 2025

: 

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Don Christensen’s role in Protect Our Defenders. He was the group’s president, not its founder.

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When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Dave Philipps writes about war, the military and veterans and covers The Pentagon for The Times.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 4, 2025, Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Military Rewind to ’90 Brings Costs and Risks, Veteran Officers Say. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe