Donald Trump honored the sacrifices of US military veterans in the traditional presidential Memorial Day speech at Arlington national cemetery, but also peppered his address on Monday with partisan political asides while talking up his own plans and achievements.
The US president laid a wreath and paid tribute to fallen soldiers and gave accounts of battlefield courage as tradition dictates, from prepared remarks, after saluting alongside his vice-president, JD Vance and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who both served in Iraq.
But Trump also veered off into rally-style personal boasting and brief partisan attacks during the solemn event.
“Those young men could never have known what their sacrifice would mean to us, but we certainly know what we owe to them. That valor gave us the freest, greatest and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said of those killed in military service.
Then he went on: “A republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years. That was a hard four years we went through.”
The president continued with an anti-immigration statement that chimes with his agenda, though without directly mentioning his predecessor, Joe Biden who served between Trump’s first term and the Republican’s return to the White House this January.
“Who would let that happen? People pouring through our borders unchecked. People doing things that are indescribable and not for today to discuss,” Trump said.
It was a nod to his Truth Social platform on Monday morning where he posted a tirade against judges who hold up his deportation aims, chiefly because of his ignoring due process obligations, as “monsters” and again attacked undocumented immigrants, using sweeping disparagements.
At Arlington, he added, to cheers from supporters in the crowd: “We will do better than we’ve ever done as a nation, better than ever before. I promise you that.”
Drawing attention to airmen lost in a raid over Vietnam and to a soldier lost to a suicide bombing in Iraq, while family members listened to the speech at the cemetery on the outskirts of Washington DC, Trump said: “These warriors picked up the mantle of duty and service, knowing that to live for others meant always that they might die for others. They asked nothing. They gave everything. And we owe them everything and more.”
“The greatest monument to their courage is not carved in marble or cast in bronze – it’s all around us, an American nation 325 million strong, which will soon be greater than it has ever been before,” he said. “It will be.”
He also used the solemn occasion to promote the celebration next month of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which he said “blows everything away, including the World Cup and including the Olympics, as far as I’m concerned”.
Both events – the soccer World Cup next year, and the next summer Olympics in 2028 – are set to be held in the US within the span of Trump’s second term.
Trump said: “We have the World Cup and we have the Olympics. I have everything. Amazing, the way things work out. God did that – I believe that,” he remarked of the timing. He added that “in some ways I’m glad I missed that [consecutive] second term” because then he wouldn’t have been president for these milestones.
He then returned to honoring fallen soldiers.
Trump also said on Monday he is considering taking a further $3bn of grant money away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools across the US, while a former president of Harvard and current professor there, Drew Gilpin Faust, warned that American freedoms and democracy were at risk.
At Arlington, Hegseth referenced men who sacrificed their lives for the nation but made no reference to women. Hegseth has systematically and bluntly attacked all diversity efforts in the US military. Vance, however, noted that the national cemetery is the “eternal resting spot for our nation’s sons and daughters”.
Trump has previously attracted heavy criticism for various actions and remarks that were disrespectful to fallen and wounded military veterans.
Later on Monday afternoon, Trump pardoned Scott Jenkins, the former Virginia sheriff who was convicted in December 2024 of conspiracy, fraud and bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds.
