Biden addresses graduating cadets at West Point Military Academy

WEST POINT, N.Y. — President Joe Biden told West Point cadets Saturday that they owed an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not to their commander in chief, delivering a commencement message that echoed his campaign-year warnings about the looming threats to American democracy.

In his 22-minute speech to the graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy, Biden did not mention former President Donald Trump or repeat his accusation that returning Trump to the Oval Office would allow him to shred the norms that protect democratic institutions.

But Biden left little doubt about the subject of his concern.

“On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America,” he said.

“Nothing is guaranteed about our democracy in America,” he added. “Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it. Now it’s your turn.”

Biden has argued that democracy is at stake in the upcoming presidential election, and that the basic institutions of government — including the military — are at risk if Trump is allowed to return to the Oval Office.

On Saturday, Biden used the moment to suggest a sharp contrast with Trump, who delivered the commencement address at West Point in 2020 and received criticism even from some within the ranks of the academy for what they said was Trump’s desire for personal loyalty from the people around him.

Trump gave his speech at West Point just weeks after Mark Esper, then the secretary of defense, and Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had joined him for a walk through Lafayette Park near the White House amid a harsh crackdown by police and the military of a Black Lives Matter protest after the death of George Floyd.

In an open letter to the West Point graduates at the time, former members of the academy urged them to remember where their obligations lay.

“We pledge service to no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant,” the former West Point cadets wrote to their successors. “Your oath is to a set of principles and an ideal expressed in the Constitution and its amendments.”

Biden cited that letter in his remarks, a not-so-subtle nod to the fears among some in the military that prompted it.

“You must keep us free at this time,” he told the cadets, calling them guardians of American democracy. “Like none before. I know you can. I know you will.”

Saturday morning’s speech marked the third time that Biden had been West Point’s commencement speaker, after appearing twice as vice president. During his first three years as president, he spoke at the Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force graduations.

Biden congratulated the Army’s newest officers and described the global challenges facing the military, delivering his speech at a moment of military upheaval abroad, university protests at home and the looming rematch for the White House with Trump in the fall.

Biden joked with the cadets about the trials and tribulations that they had endured in four years of preparation to assume leadership in the Army. And he reminded them that they may soon be drawn into conflicts overseas, where so-called hard power remains a necessary tool alongside diplomacy in a turbulent world.

“There remains a hard-power world. You can’t draw any other conclusion when powerful nations try to coerce their neighbors, or terrorists attempt evil plots,” Biden told the cadets, citing missions in Ukraine, humanitarian missions in the Gaza Strip, instability in Asia and defense of Israel against Iranian missiles.

“Ninety-nine percent of the missiles, drones,” he added, never reached their targets “because of the quality of our forces.”

Biden’s return to the Army’s elite educational institution provided him with a collegiate backdrop far from the student protests over his handling of the war in Gaza.