I hadn’t even planned to glance at Trump’s rambling speech to the assembled generals, flown in to Marine Base Quantico at enormous expense ($8 million is my guess — why not make up numbers, if they refuse to tell us?) so that they could sit in bored yet astonished silence and listen to the old men blather away.
But then I kept seeing the quotes from the event that sounded so extreme that I was finally tempted to peek. A quick look turned into fascination, the kind of fascination you see in drivers slowing down to gawk at a gruesome wreck. Fascination turned into a determination to transcribe the whole damn thing just so I could read and analyze it, not just hear it.
(As a cheat, I started with the transcription published by the military news website SOFX, which I extensively edited and transformed while listening to the full broadcast.)
What I quickly noticed in the old man’s delivery was what I’ve seen in all his prepared speeches: he alternates between a stiff, schoolboy-like reading from the teleprompter and a loose, rambling, all-over-the-place, disconnected but colloquial style in his impromptu additions. In this address, his rambling digressions overwhelmed the pre-written teleprompter speech. My estimate is that the speech as written would have taken maybe 12 minutes to read, not the hour-and-a-half of the full meandering mess.
So, as I worked on the transcription, I separated out the words that I was quite certain Trump was reading from the teleprompter, as shown by the direction he was looking (the teleprompter screens are located at about 45 degrees to the left and right of the lectern) and by the wooden stiffness of his delivery. At times you can see him squinting to make out the words on the teleprompter screen.
The entire transcript of the speech takes up about 23 pages of single-spaced text. I may put it up here on Daily Kos later as a separate story if there’s no rule against such a long post, just to keep an on-line record of it. But for this entry, I have separated out the two or three pages that I’m calling the Speechwriters’ Address. I have edited the words only slightly, cutting a couple of words here and there that strike me as Trump’s impromptu additions and joining together sentences that were separated in the delivered address by Trump’s endless digressions.
I think that this version of the address is worth isolating, because it shows what the people around Trump are thinking. As others have pointed out and as you may have noticed yourselves, Trump is showing increasing signs of cognitive decline. He appears to have outsourced most of his job as president to his advisors, particularly Stephen Miller, whose xenophobic fingerprints are all over the actions that Trump has okayed in between golf games this year.
So here it is, together with a few of my comments.
UPDATE: I have just put up a post with the full transcript of Trump’s remarks, in case anyone wants to see the full context of this “reconstructed speech.”
I want to thank Secretary Hegseth and General Caine, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and so many others in this room, who together represent the greatest and most elite fighting force in the history of the world: the United States military. We’re very proud of our military. There could be no higher honor than to serve as your Commander-in-Chief. To each and every one of you, I thank you for your unwavering devotion to the armed forces and to the country we’ve all sworn a sacred oath to defend.
[Note: a pretty standard opening, though a bit more militaristic than usual for my taste.]
I’m thrilled to be here this morning to address the senior leadership of what is once again known around the world as the Department of War. As Secretary Hegseth has beautifully described, the name change reflects far more than the shift in branding. It is a historic reassertion of our purpose and our identity and our pride. Together, we’re reawakening the warrior spirit. This is the spirit that won and built this nation. From the cavalry that tamed the Great Plains to the ferocious, unyielding power of Patton, Bradley, and General Douglas MacArthur, in this effort, we’re a team. And so, my message to you is very simple. I am with you. I support you. And as President, I have your backs.
[Note: They are really leaning on the “Department of War” nonsense. Of course Congress creates the executive departments, by law, and only Congress can change their names. By insisting on this bs, made-up name, Trump’s people are staking out their claim to unitary executive power: Trump, by the use of his awesome Word, can make and remake the world. To which I call bullshit.
The other notable thing about this passage is how openly the writers parade their interpretation of US history as the history of white settlers “building” the country by dispossessing indigenous people of their land at riflepoint. The most notable point in Trump’s delivery, though, was when he read the WW2 generals’ names as “Patton Bradley and the great General Douglas MacArthur,” apparently not understanding that Patton and Bradley were two different people.]
Together, over the next few years, we’re going to make our military stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer, and more powerful than it has ever been before.
As a result of the exciting renewal of the spirit of our armed forces, over the past eight months, new enlistments have surged to record highs. For the first time on record in 2025, the Navy, Air Force, and Space Force all met or surpassed their recruiting goals three months early. The Army did even better, and they did it four months early. We are now at 106 percent of our recruiting targets for the year, which is the best in more than a generation. As for the Marines, morale is so strong that the Marine Corps will meet its 2026 retention targets before the end of October, the earliest it has ever happened in the history of our country.
[Note: Yeah, of course they want to give Trump credit for the surge in recruitments, which is actually due to reforms made under the Biden administration in 2022.]
As leaders, our commitment to every patriot who puts on the uniform is to ensure that the American military remains the most lethal and dominant on the planet, not merely for a few years but for the decades and generations to come. We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us, and so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us. That is why one of the first executive orders I signed upon taking office was to restore the principle of merit. One of the biggest cases that we won was the decision of the United States Supreme Court to allow us to proceed on the [basis of] merit.
[Note: The emphasis on “merit” is implicitly meant as a contrast to the imaginary lack of merit among the people who the MAGA folks call “DEI hires,” by which of course they mean anyone in a leadership position who isn’t white, male, and deeply conservative. If we really want to talk about “merit,” let’s start with Hegseth. No, no, let’s start with Trump.]
We are going to be greater than we ever were before. We are bringing back a focus on fitness, ability, character, and strength. That is because the purposes of American military is not to protect anyone’s feelings. It’s to protect our republic, which we dearly love. We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom. And we will be a fighting and winning machine.
[Note: I’m not quite sure what they mean by “character,” but it can’t be what I mean by the word if it can encompass anyone in the current administration. The speechwriters’ hostility to “protecting feelings” and to being “politically correct,” though, is transparent: they hate anyone who cares about the people that they harass and harm, and they hate anyone who isn’t one of them: white, male, and right-wing.]
But very importantly, with that goal in mind, I have committed to spending over $1 trillion on our military in 2026, the most in the history of our country. Every branch is seeing major investments. As I announced in the Oval Office in March, we are rapidly moving forward with the first-ever sixth-generation fighter jet. We’re investing tens of billions of dollars in modernizing our nuclear deterrence capabilities like never before. We’ve begun construction on what we call the Golden Dome Missile Defense Shield. It’ll be the most sophisticated in the world. Under my budget, we will be expanding the U.S. Navy by at least 19 ships next year, including submarines, destroyers, assault ships, and more. On top of all this, we will deliver a hard-earned pay raise of 3.8 percent to every soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, Space Guardsman, and Marine.
Not only are we rebuilding our great strength, but for the first time in years, my administration is actually using that strength to defend the core and vital interests of America. Very simply, we are putting America first. Together with many of you in the room, we have brought back the fundamental principle that defending the homeland is the military’s first and most important priority.
[Great, so “America First” has gone from a Lindberghian slogan to an operating principle of the military. Worse, they are defining “America First” as synonymous with “defending the homeland” (it probably sounded better in the original German, as Molly Ivins said about a Pat Buchanan speech). We’ll see in a second what they mean by “defending the homeland” — it ain’t good.]
Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia while America is under invasion from within. After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help, we are defending the borders of our country from now on. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We’re running it based on common sense and based on love of our country. I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission.
[Here it is. They equate “defending our country” with “defending the border,” in turn equated with keeping out immigrants. On top of that, they claim not only that their xenophobic immigration postures are based on “common sense” but that they are equivalent to “love of our country.” If you welcome immigrants, if you are okay with foreigners from foreign lands moving in among us and perhaps becoming citizens, they are saying, you must hate America.]
Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. These service members are following in a great and storied military tradition, from protecting frontier communities to chasing outlaws and bandits in the Wild West. Our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, George Bush, and others all used the armed forces to keep domestic order and peace. So today, I want to thank every service member, from general to private, who has bravely helped us secure the nation’s capital and make America safe for the American people.
[Yeah, here they go, cherry-picking unrelated examples from US history to justify the current administration’s drive to deploy military forces in American cities in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.]
Together with the leaders here today, we are also restoring a needed focus on defeating threats in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout this region, cartel terrorists have been allowed to wage a relentless campaign of death and destruction on our country. But under our leadership, the military is now the knife’s edge in combating this sinister enemy. We have put the traffickers and cartels on notice. As President, I will never hesitate to defend our people from threats of Iran’s nuclear power.
[Now they’re trying to justify the murders they commit on the high seas when they use the military to target boats near Venezuela, in what is probably an effort to goad that country into a military conflict (though who knows what they’re really thinking, if anything). The notion that drug trafficking — a law enforcement matter, which in a better world would instead be a public health matter — is the same thing as a military attack “on our country” is obscene and unjustifiable.]
As a result of these actions and many others since my inauguration, we are witnessing the triumphant return of peace through strength, paving the way for progress once thought almost impossible. What a difference a presidential election can make. Yesterday at the White House, we put forward a plan for peace in Gaza. We announced the creation of a Board of Peace, which is going to reign over that territory. We are striving tirelessly to end the terrible war in Ukraine.
We are also working hard to get the Allies to share more of the burden of our defense. All NATO members have committed to [increase their defense spending to 5 percent a year.] We are now selling large quantities of American-made weapons to NATO. It’s my hope that, from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, our Allies will make similar commitments to increase their military capabilities. This will greatly strengthen our alliances, and it will make war far less likely. It will also help the United States rapidly rebuild our defense industrial base. Each of you can play an important part in getting Allies to do their part. So, to that end, Secretary Hegseth will soon be announcing major reforms to streamline military acquisitions and expedite foreign military sales.
In the coming months, we’ll be making even more historic announcements to fully embrace the identity of the Department of War. If we are as ruthless and relentless as our enemies, the United States Armed Forces will be totally unmatched in the future. From Sparta to Rome, to the British Empire, to the United States of America, history has shown that military supremacy has never been simply a matter of money or manpower. At the end of the day, it is the culture, spirit of our military, that truly sets us apart from any other nation. Our ultimate strength will always come from the fierce people and those brilliant people with such pride and the unbending will and the traditions of excellence that have made us the most unstoppable force ever to walk the face of the Earth.
[The historical trajectory traced here — “Sparta to Rome, to the British Empire, to the United States of America” — is the imaginary lineage of Western Civilization, according to nineteenth-century imperialist mythmaking. Substituting Sparta for the more classical Athens is telling, though. They are apparently taken in by the current-day image of Sparta among young(ish) men of the right as the land of military heroes and strong he-men, no doubt as seen in the movie 300. They are trying to make that a real thing. I wonder if any of the assembled generals fall for this balderdash.]
The men and women in this room inherit the legacy built and won by Washington and Jackson, Grant and Pershing, Eisenhower and Patton, Nimitz and LeMay. We carry forward the majestic military heritage passed down from father to son, soldier to soldier, and one generation of warriors to the next. From Concord Bridge to Fort McHenry, from Gettysburg to Manila Bay, from Normandy to Sicily, and from the jungles of Vietnam to the dusty streets of Baghdad, America’s military has charged into hellfire, climbed up jagged mountains, crossed roaring oceans, and thundered across open deserts to defend our flag, our freedom, and our homeland.
[That list of generals to be emulated can probably stand a lot of analysis and dissecting; I will just underline the appearance of Curtis LeMay, not someone you hear much about these days. As a commander in the Air Force, LeMay led the firebombing of Japanese cities and the mining of their harbors during WW2; later, as the top Air Force general during the Kennedy and early Johnson administrations, he pushed for bombing and invading Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis (which didn’t happen) and for the massive bombing of North Vietnam, perhaps even with nuclear bombs (which, thank God, didn’t happen either; the actual bombing campaign was quite bad enough). But for kids of my generation, he is best known as the running mate of ardent segregationist George Wallace during his 1968 presidential run, during which he distinguished himself by advocating for the tactical use of nuclear weapons. Now, I wonder what led the speechwriters to include LeMay in their list of generals — was it his comfort with segregationist politics, or his support for what Trump calls “the nuclear”? Likely, it’s both. In any case, it’s a dog whistle to those who get the reference.]
Now we are discovering American muscle, reasserting American might, and beginning the next storied chapter in American military legends and lore. When it comes to defending our way of life, nothing will slow us. No enemy will stop us. And no adversary will stand in our way.
[The most notable thing about this silly jingoistic paragraph was the way Trump read it. Clearly unfamiliar with the word “lore,” he spelled it out: “That’s L-O-R-E. It is, lore.” What a dumbass.]
Because we are the United States military — the best, the boldest, the bravest that the world has ever known. With leaders like we have here in this room today, we will vanquish every danger and crush every threat to our freedom in every generation to come, because we will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win, win. I want to just thank you once again. And God bless the United States military. And God bless America. God bless you all.
[Yeah, the speechwriters stuck that “fight-fight-fight” in there as a sop to the old man’s ego. Even so, he read it mechanically, clearly seeing the words in printed form for the first time.]
And that’s it. To sum up: in my view, Trump’s speechwriters are writing on behalf of the clique who are actually running the administration while Trump is off grifting and golfing. Miller, Vought — you know the guys. So the “original draft” of Trump’s Quantico address, which I’ve tried to recreate here, reflects the views of the people who pull the strings. What do they believe in? Military power and their own right to use it to advance their own ends. “Merit,” by which they mean some form of segregation and/or white nationalism. Being able to attack and harm their perceived enemies with impunity. A harshly xenophobic national and international policy, policed by military force both inside and outside the country. A white nationalist narrative of national “greatness.” And expressing all of this with dog whistles and inside language, to make it deniable and to avoid press scrutiny. (That last point is just about their only departure from Trump’s views.)
If I can find the time (a big “if”), at some point later on I may post a few highlights of Trump’s demented additions to the Speechwriters’ Address, and/or post the full transcript of the entire address.
