It was a sunny Saturday morning in West Point, that venerable military academy on the Hudson River, when the President of the United States stepped onto the stage – wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap, walking heavily, yet determined to once again cloud the national consciousness with a mixture of nostalgia, confusion, and ideological scorn. What followed was less a speech than a meandering, hour-long monologue – an intellectual wreckage that can only be described as a declaration of bankruptcy of the mind.
Trophy Wives, Golf Balls, and Al Capone
Trump spoke – and spoke. About diversity programs, which he proudly denounced as “demeaning” and “divisive.” About the “liberation” of the troops from education, inclusion, and respect. About trans people, who in his world simply do not exist. About drag shows, golfers, suburban developers, William Levitt and his divorce. And – in a turn bordering on the bizarre – about Alphonse Capone, the infamous gangster boss, whom he compared to himself.
I’ve been through a very hard time with some very radical, pathological people – and I’m telling you: I was pursued more than the great, late Alphonse Capone, the President told the cadets without so much as blinking.
This form of megalomania, mixed with self-pity, has long become a Trumpian constant. But what once passed as calculated provocation now seems merely confused, unanchored – dangerous in its claim to power, pathetic in its delivery.
Destruction Instead of Leadership
The stage at West Point was supposed to belong to the young graduates – those ready to serve a democratic America. But Trump used the moment for a full-scale attack on exactly that idea: the equality of all. His speech was a triumphal march of authoritarianism, an obituary to empathy. The military, he declared, was not there to accompany cultural change but to “dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America – anywhere, anytime, and any place.” It is the language of a man who confuses democracy with domination.
His anti-DEI decree, which led to the dissolution of numerous clubs at West Point – including associations of Black engineers, Asian-Pacific students, indigenous forums, or the Society of Women Engineers – shows what Trump understands by leadership: exclusion, degradation, erasure.
A President in Internal Collapse
And while he digressed about golf legends like Gary Player – including bizarre anecdotes about muscle mass, drive lengths, and “trophy” second wives – it became painfully clear what is missing in this presidency: integrity, clarity, dignity. Instead, Trump drifts through associations, gets lost in half-sentences, repeats himself, and escalates into a paranoid worldview where courts, minorities, and educational institutions are imagined as enemies.
“Our country was invaded for four years,” he shouted at the cadets – as if America were a besieged bunker where only anger, fear, and isolation remain.
Just hours earlier, a federal judge had ordered his administration to bring back a Guatemalan man who had been unlawfully deported to Mexico – a symbol of the moral disaster left behind by Trump’s immigration policies.
From Pride to Embarrassment
It wasn’t long ago that West Point was a place where statesmen with vision and dignity spoke. Now, standing there is a president who mocks his own legal system, compares himself to a mob boss, and after all his digressions, retreats to Bedminster – to his golf course. No vision, no renewal, no recognition of those in uniform before him. Only self-glorification, revenge fantasies – and a president who no longer has control over himself.
The question that arises after this speech is no longer a partisan one. It is democratic – even civilizational: How long can a country afford a mentally staggering president whose words no longer lead but confuse – and whose claim to power is built on destruction? The answer lies in the future of those he had before him that morning – the young officers and leaders. May they, in their duty, defend what their commander-in-chief seeks to tear down with words: decency, truth, the republic.
English 
German 
