President Donald Trump will address the graduates at the U.S. Military Academy Saturday with tensions between him and the military running high.
Trump's West Point speech comes after a week during which several former military officials criticized his handling of the George Floyd protests and his threats to use active-duty troops to secure America's streets. And on Thursday, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for joining Trump on a recent walk outside the White House gates to pose for photos at a church after police used force to clear protesters from Lafayette Park.
Also hanging in the air are the calls to rename military bases that are currently named after Confederate generals, something Trump said he would not do. (As Politico has noted, many of the 1,100 graduating cadets have slept in barracks named for Gen. Robert E. Lee, who was West Point supervisor before breaking with the union in the name of the slave-holding Confederacy.)
And this week, hundreds of West Point graduates wrote an open letter to military leaders that criticized the Trump administration's threats to use the military as "weapons against fellow Americans" to stop the aforementioned protests.
It's unclear what Trump will tell the graduates, but the speech has been on his schedule for months.
Politico reported that though some hope the president will use Saturday’s event and legendary backdrop overlooking the Hudson River to make efforts to heal rifts, others fear he might stoke more divisions and add to civil-military tensions.
“I’d love to hear the president change his mind about a lot of things,” retired Army Col. Joseph Collins, a former West Point instructor who has also taught at the National Defense University, told Politico. “This business of threatening protesters with military forces, there was a lot of emotion with that."
According to The Wall Street Journal, the event will be anything but normal. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the graduates will sit six feet from each other, will wear masks, and will not shake Trump's hand upon receiving their diplomas.
What's more, family members will watch from a nearby field via livestream instead of the stadium.
All of the graduates have been tested for COVID-19, The Hill reported.
Deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere said, "Saturday's graduation is about these incredible cadets and their amazing accomplishments, and as the commander-in-chief, President Trump wants to celebrate that and thank them for their service to our country."
There are concerns, however, that some of the graduates could take a knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement or perform some sort of protest against the president. Any disciplinary action, according to the Journal, will be handed on a case-by-case basis.
Floyd, a black man, died on May 25 after a white police officer held a knee to his neck for almost 9 minutes. The incident sparked nationwide protests, some of which have been violent. That prompted the U.S. Secret Service to drastically beef up security at the White House as Trump urged governors to use their states' National Guard.
Active-duty troops with bayonets were assembling just outside of Washington, D.C. in preparation of being called up to help control the protesters.
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