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, Democratic president Joe Biden who served between Trump’s first term and the Republican’s return to the White House this January.