President Donald Trump’s latest address to the nation’s top military brass has set off alarm bells among historians, veterans, and analysts, with some insiders claiming senior officers walked away wondering whether the commander in chief is mentally fit for duty.
On Tuesday, Trump spoke for more than an hour to hundreds of generals and admirals at a military conclave in Virginia. Instead of rallying the Pentagon’s top minds, critics say the speech left the audience puzzled by what one analyst described as a “quieter and more confused” performance than usual.
Tom Nichols, writing in The Atlantic, didn’t mince words. “The president talked at length, and his comments should have confirmed to even the most sympathetic observer that he is, as the kids say, not okay,” Nichols wrote. According to Nichols, aides to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had framed the gathering as an opportunity to energize senior officers and sell them on Hegseth’s vision for a “new Department of War.” Instead, Nichols suggested, many left the room unsettled. “The generals and admirals should be forgiven if they walked out of the auditorium and wondered: what on earth is wrong with the commander in chief?” he wrote.
The address, which stretched well beyond an hour, immediately generated a wave of criticism from veterans and military experts. Historian Paul Cohen called the speech a “truly significant turning point” in Trump’s presidency. Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling labeled it “offensive” and “insulting.” Nichols described it as a “bizarre ramble” filled with awkward moments and signs of unpreparedness rarely seen from Trump in a setting this formal.
Perhaps the most striking moment came just minutes into the speech, when Trump appeared to sense the silence in the room and asked the high-ranking officers to clap for him. “Just have a good time, and if you want to applaud, you applaud,” he said. “And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank; there goes your future.” The line fell flat, evoking Jeb Bush’s infamous “please clap” moment from 2016, but with far higher stakes.
The rest of the speech went between rally-style talking points and off-script lines. Trump boasted about renaming the “Gulf of America,” touted his strike on Iran, and launched into familiar attacks on former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. While these subjects are hardly new for Trump, the context was unusual: this wasn’t a campaign rally, but a room filled with senior officers responsible for national security.
Nichols warned that the speech could undermine the military’s confidence in its civilian leadership. He invoked a haunting historical parallel from 1973, when Air Force nuclear missile officer Harold Hering famously asked how he could be sure an order to launch came from a “sane president.” That question ended Hering’s career. But Nichols suggested many officers at Quantico may now be privately asking the same thing.
“Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them,” Nichols wrote. “But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?”
It was supposed to be a pep talk. Instead, it may have deepened doubts within America’s highest military circles about the judgment of their commander in chief.
Insane…too many late nights involved with conspiracy theories taking up valuable head space in our current leadership!!