Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a commencement address at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. His message to cadets centered on his and President Trump’s mission to remove “woke ideologies” from the military. Hegseth stated that West Point was not “woke Princeton” and declared “diversity is not our strength, unity is. Read the full transcript of his remarks below. “What makes us different is that we don’t fight because we hate what’s in front of us,” Hegseth told graduates. “We fight because we love what’s behind us, our family, our freedom, and our flag. The battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy. Combat is the ultimate test, and our best Americans must ace it. Our competitors, near-peer adversaries across the globe are trying to best us.” “You’re fit, not fat,” Hegseth said. “You are disciplined, not distracted. Many of you, even in your short time in uniform, have endured what I call the slow slide of the U.S. Army. You’ve seen standards lowered. You’ve seen an obsession with race and gender. You’ve seen the watering down of discipline. Codes weakened and traditions tossed aside in the name of political correctness. Statues taken down. Paintings placed in the basement.” “I’m here to tell you the slow slide here at West Point and across the United States Army is over,” Hegseth declared.

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Well, thank you very much. What a day. It’s got to be raining. It’s the Army. To the Superintendent, the Commandant, the Board of Visitors, the 50-year class sponsors, Secretary Driscoll, faculty, proud families, and most importantly, the West Point Class of 2026, good morning and congratulations. I bring you greetings from our Commander-in-Chief, President Donald J. Trump. Now, most senior leaders wait until the end to have this discussion, but I’m just going to come up the top rope right now and get this out of the way. For all those cadets who’ve committed minor infractions or violations of the regulations of the United States Military Academy, before which ordinary and special punishment has been imposed or is being considered to the Corps of Cadets, as President Trump might say, a complete and total pardon. Man, they must have done a lot. Well, on a day like today, there’s no better way to start than with a word from scripture, and on a day as special as this for the 998 great Americans of this class, there’s no more fitting verse than from Isaiah 6-8. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, here I am, send me. Four years ago, you raised your right hand, swore an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution, and in that moment, you said to your country, send me. And here you are. You survived beast barracks, you survived the early morning formations, the Saturday morning inspections, the academics, the grueling physical demands, and you beat the dean multiple times over. You’ve proven that you have what it to lead our nation’s top 1%, America’s most valued treasure, America’s son and daughters, the American soldier. And now today, we are going to send you. We’re sending you to lead, we’re sending you to forge warriors, and we’re sending you, perhaps, to war. And you are ready. The world today is at a crossroads, just as it has been for the past 250 years of our great republic. You are stepping into the arena at a time when the stakes could not be higher. But look around you, and I know you have. There was a time when professors here would say much of the history we teach was made by the people we taught. You walk the same paths as Grant, MacArthur, and Eisenhower, and the same exists today in these ranks. You stand on the shoulders of giants, the men and women of this legendary institution who since 1802 have boldly stepped forward and proclaimed, send me. Throughout our storied history, when soldiers said, send me, it didn’t matter whether they were well-equipped or poorly equipped. It didn’t matter whether they were stepping into a clear mission or a vague one, whether there were clear skies or raining. Send me was always the determined reply. Every one of them, just like you, were called to serve something greater than themselves. Rich, poor, country, city, black, white, it doesn’t matter. Send me. Most of your peers, your friends from high school who went in a different direction, who maybe went to normal colleges, many don’t understand what you’ve done. 27 years ago when I was accepted into West Point, or at least that’s what I think my appointment letter said. I’ll have to check the PAO, Sue. I’m just kidding. 27 years ago, I didn’t fully understand what saying no meant. Maybe some members of your own family don’t understand either. Many may not understand why you chose this path, and frankly, some never will, but you did. And you know what? That’s okay, because you’ve chosen to be different. You’ve set yourself apart. And somewhere deep inside of you, when you were looking at your future, there was a question burning in your gut. If not me, then who’s it going to be? And if not now, then when? And your answer was, send me. West Point is set apart. It’s not a normal college or university. Now, I know there have been foolish and feckless leaders in the recent past who’ve tried their hardest to make it more normal. We saw woke and weak leaders trying to make West Point look like woke Princeton, which happens to be my long-lost and lost alma mater. They embraced the DEI craze and tried to introduce diversity and inclusion studies, and they hired professors who advocated for anti-American ideologies right here in these halls. But no more. West Point is set apart. It’s special. It’s above politics. Success here is based on merit. It’s how you perform that matters. This is the United States Military Academy. Its sole unflinching mission is to train young Americans to be leaders of character in the profession of arms and committed to a lifetime of service to our great nation. You know military history. You understand engineering, geopolitics, and how to lead troops under fire. You hold yourselves to a higher standard. You are fit, not fat. You are disciplined. I like that section. They still got a few years, don’t they? You’re fit, not fat. You are disciplined, not distracted. Many of you, even in your short time in uniform, have endured what I call the slow slide of the U.S. Army. You’ve seen standards lowered. You’ve seen an obsession with race and gender. You’ve seen the watering down of discipline. Codes weakened and traditions tossed aside in the name of political correctness. Statues taken down. Paintings placed in the basement. I’m here to tell you the slow slide here at West Point and across the United States Army is over. You, this group, represents the snapback. You, our newest warriors, our soon-to-be newly commissioned second lieutenants, will snap it back into formation. Political leaders with ideological agendas and weak military leaders who were just looking to curry favor for the next star allowed our cherished Army to slide off our true north. But you, our warriors, will snap it back. You are the future. Others may have allowed it to slide away. You will not. You will restore our Army and I will empower you to do it. It’s really not that difficult. Here’s what we want, not only in the Army but across the joint force. We want high, uniform, unwavering standards. We want meticulous discipline, the kind I see right here. We want true accountability and we want it all in service of readiness and lethality. Readiness means preparation. It means training, realistic, tough training. We must train exactly like we fight and that means real, practical warfighting skills. It means lethality. Let me be perfectly clear. You are not an Army of one and you are certainly not an Army of woke. You are an American Army, an Army of warriors. Four years ago, you raised your right hand and said, send me. And today, as you join the ranks of the greatest fighting force in the history of the world, we stand together as one Army and we say, send us. We say it not because of our differences but because of what we share. The single dumbest phrase in military history was peddled in our Army only a few short years ago. You’ve all heard it, maybe in your first two years at West Point. Our diversity is our strength. The single dumbest phrase in military history. We had generals saying this with a straight face on national television. It was absolute nonsense. Now, these sorts of silly things can be laughed at when they occur in a civilian lounge or civilian faculty lounge or debated in graduate seminars, but they cannot be tolerated in our formations. These ideas are what get people killed. Diversity is not our strength. Unity is our strength. The call is send us, not send he, not send she, not send they them. It’s send us. Our strength is our shared purpose. Our strength is our oath to the Constitution. It’s our embrace of the Army values, the idea of merit, our mission, our absolute commitment to duty and honor and country. These are the things that unify us. Send me becomes send us, because you are one fighting force just as we are one nation under God. And the American people are responding to our renewed back to basics approach. Recruitments are up across the joint force, and I’m pleased to announce that just two days ago, the U.S. Army met its 2026 recruiting goals four months early, a second record year in a row. That means you’re about to train this group right here and lead 61,500 new soldiers. And next year, when we grow the size of the Army, it will be even more. When you’re out there in your formations as platoon leaders at the tip of the spear, you will be at the tip of the spear of their snapback. You will not compromise, you will not seek color, and you will not try to meet arbitrary quotas based on immutable characteristics. You do not have time to celebrate identity months, and you will not make excuses for yourselves, and you will not accept excuses from others. You will lead. That’s what this academy has trained you to do, to lead us. To lead from the front, relentlessly train your soldiers, listen to your NCOs who are the backbone of the Army and will save your life. Do harder PT, push your soldiers to become more proficient, more lethal, and more prepared at everything they do. As I think back on my first platoon, if I could rewind the clock and talk to high speed National Guard Second Lieutenant Hegseth before leading his infantry platoon at Guantanamo Bay and into combat in Iraq, here’s a few things I’d tell him. Plan and rehearse for contingencies every time. There’s no substitute for preparation ever. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Plan for recovery, resupply, alternate communications, rehearse, and refine. The first air assault I ever did leading a platoon in Baghdad in the middle of the night on an al-Qaeda objective, we had 36 hours to prepare, and I spent every minute of those 36 hours preparing, and it paid off because when, and I love pilots, but when the pilots dropped us a few hundred meters in the wrong spot in the middle of a mud field and the GPS didn’t work, there was one man that platoon was looking at. It was me, and because I’d done every map recon, every satellite imagery recon, every recon I could, I had a general sense of where we were and could orient at that moment in the right direction. If I had not prepared, they would have looked at me and I would have looked right back at them, and nothing I did was perfect. Nothing you’ll do will be perfect, but at least you can prepare. Always be the most prepared member in your unit. Be decisive and be aggressive. Pick a course of action and carry it through until you have a point to reassess. Don’t keep second guessing. Set the example and display courage, both physically and morally, to make the tough calls, especially when it’s not popular. It doesn’t mean you won’t be afraid, but it means you will be prepared to push through it. Know the purpose of your mission and explain it to your soldiers. It greatly improves execution when you share with them the purpose and unlock their combined talent. And then take care of your soldiers. Take care of their families and each other. If you never leave a fallen comrade, you’ve done your job. If you’re in trouble, if your men are in trouble, your women are in trouble, you are en route. Ask Dude 44 Alpha and Dude 44 Bravo how grateful they are that this spirit is alive and well. Downed pilots, two mission, seven hours in, downtown Iran, straight up the middle, one in the middle of the day, one in the middle of the night, two American pilots home. Never leave a fallen comrade behind. Last and most importantly, seek God and know that we are not him. It’s humbling. It’s also liberating. As Charlie Kirk often said, remember always, this too shall pass. The good times will pass. The bad times will pass. You’re never as good as you think you are, nor are you as bad as you think you are. Seek God in every circumstance. Nobody is perfect, but when the bullets start flying, you will not be unprepared. You and your soldiers must be the most prepared, best trained, deadliest, most elite in the world. You’re in a dangerous line of work, and there is no world in which high-intensity conflict exists without great pain, agony, sickness, and human tragedy. In this War Department, we raise up warriors, purpose-built, not for good weather, blue skies, or fancy parades. We’re built to load up on the back of helicopters, C-17s, or Strikers, in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul, to go to dangerous places, to engage those who would do our nation and our citizens harm, and deliver justice in close and brutal combat on behalf of the American people. But what makes us different is that we don’t fight because we hate what’s in front of us. We fight because we love what’s behind us, our family, our freedom, and our flag. The battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy. Combat is the ultimate test, and our best Americans must ace it. Our competitors, near-peer adversaries across the globe are trying to best us. They want to out-innovate us, out-build us, and defeat us by whatever means necessary. They are watching us, and they are testing us. When the call comes, either we’re ready, and your soldiers are ready, or you are not. And our Army, it must learn, and it’s learning quickly. Drones, AI, and air defenses, and we must learn fast. And I need you to lead and lean into that learning. That is part of the snapback as well. At the small unit level, innovating every way possible in a world where on the battlefield, innovation at a moment’s notice is the difference between success and failure. On the battlefield, well, social engineering and woke ideology are fine for Harvard. Silly, but fine. On the battlefield, there is no place for them. Demand high standards, promote based on merit alone, be the snapback, and do it without apology. Now, as you go out to do your job, let me tell you briefly what my job is. First, my job is to make it easier for you to do your job by clearing away the debris. It’s a daily struggle at the Pentagon. We have our war against bureaucracy, and it is real. It is a war of attrition that I’ve told my staff every single day we will wage to win. A war of attrition for four years that we will fight and win. The bureaucratic nonsense, the political correctness, the red tape that have nothing to do with readiness, war fighting, or lethality, we are taking a chainsaw to all of it. Second, my job is to get you what you need to do your job. That means real acquisition reform, procurement reform, ending the culture of spending 10 years and 10 billion dollars extra to build a system that’s obsolete by the time it reaches your platoon. We’re going to buy lethal, effective gear, and we’re going to get it into your hands fast and then get you the right to repair, as your secretary talks about all the time. Third, my job is to untie your hands and to have your back. When you make hard calls, when you enforce the standards, when you prioritize lethality over likability, you will have top cover. Lawyers don’t run companies. Lawyers don’t run battalions. Commanders do. No more walking on eggshells. Order is being restored. And that’s all I ever wanted from my chain of command. People who let me do my job, empowered me to do it, and then supported me when it was done. No matter what, President Trump and I will have your back when tough decisions are made, especially decisions made in a split second in the heat of battle that office air-conditioned offices in Washington D.C. will never have, understand. Your hands are untied. My job is easy. Your job is hard. Your job is to forge a team of American soldiers who will stand tall, not back down, look the enemy in the eye, and whisper, send us. You are in the profession of arms. You feel comfortable inside the violence so that our fellow citizens can live peacefully. Lethality is your calling card and victory our only acceptable end state. Your soldiers must be ready for anything because the world is only getting more complex. Just look at what our soldiers have done in just the last few months alone. We’ve asked our airborne and rapid reaction forces to deploy at a moment’s notice to the Middle East, standing as an iron shield to protect American bases and American lives from Iranian proxies. This includes American Army units using HIMARS to help sink the Iranian Navy. I know the Army loves sinking the Navy. That’s the only Navy you’re currently allowed to sink. We’ve asked our special operators to conduct grueling, highly classified missions in the SOUTHCOM AOR. You may recall a small operation in Venezuela just after New Year’s, the most complex raid in the history of JSOC. And we’ve asked our Guard, Reserve, and active duty units right here at home defending the homeland, going to our southern border to secure that border, to respond to natural disasters, and bring order and security to our communities. I could go on and on. This is what our soldiers are doing right now, and tomorrow they will be looking at you to lead them. My seven kids are here with me today. My wife Jenny and I brought them. Our oldest is 15 years old. He may look at attending West Point one day or, heaven forbid, the Naval Academy. Who knows? We have five boys and two girls, all Americans, all children of God. I don’t know what path God will choose for them, and I know that I’ll fiercely love them no matter what they do. But I can tell you this, nothing in the world would make me prouder than to hear one of them stand up and proclaim, send me. We live in a culture of clickbait and rage bait and vapid social media and celebrity gossip. In a world like that, it’s really easy to get distracted and lost. And no matter what my kids end up choosing, I pray, like this audience, they choose substance. I pray they choose service, and I pray they choose purpose. Send me is the timeless, selfless call to service. It’s the craving to serve something greater than yourself, and there’s no better way to do it than to choose the United States Military Academy at West Point. You made that choice. You made that choice, and there is no higher calling on planet Earth, no more honorable choice than the one you made. You put yourselves through the fire. I can’t imagine. You did it. I didn’t. I can’t imagine to be here today. And because of that, you should be my kids’ heroes. Who we celebrate, who we honor, is a reflection of what any society values. We honor you today and rightfully so. You should be my kids’ heroes, and I know for a fact that you are mine. You are the real 1%. You are the real 1% of our society. You are the real elite, along with every soldier you’ll ever lead. You are the absolute best that America has to offer. In that verse from Isaiah, the answer to the Lord was bold and it was unwavering. I am here. Send me. Now is your time to be sent. Go lead. Turn me into us. Focus on preparation. Uphold your honor and do it all without a single apology. Lead the snapback that our Army and our great Republic so desperately require. Duty, honor, country. Congratulations to the Class of 2026. I look forward to serving with you, serving you, and seeing you on the field. May God bless you. May Almighty God bless the United States Army, and may Almighty God continue to bless this great Republic, the United States of America. Beat Navy.

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