War Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers West Point Commencement Speech – May 23, 2026
War Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered the commencement address at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, on Saturday, where he torched woke identity politics and gave advice to the newly commissioned Army Lieutenants.
Hegseth, who was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 2003 through Princeton University’s ROTC program and retired from the US Army National Guard as a Major, completed three active-duty deployments in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan and received two Bronze Star medals.
During his remarks to the graduating class of 2026, Hegseth harkened back to his days leading his first air assault mission, targeting Al-Qaeda in Baghdad, to share advice for the Army’s newest Lieutenants.
“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,” he told the graduates.
“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,” Hegseth continued, pointing to the flawlessly executed April rescue mission of two airmen in Iran.
“Ask Dude 44 Alpha and Dude 44 Bravo how grateful they are that this spirit is alive and well,” he said. “Downed pilots, two missions, 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.”
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Hegseth also delivered an incredible rebuke of the US military’s abolished woke policies and the current ideas circulating on college campuses, telling graduates, “The battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy.”
“Social engineering and woke ideology are fine for Harvard, silly but fine,” he said. “On the battlefield, there is no place for them.”
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Hegseth: 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. While, social engineering and woke ideology are fine for Harvard, silly but fine, on the battlefield, there is no place for them.
Hegseth also did a near-perfect Trump impersonation, granting a “Complete and Total Pardon” for any infractions to the West Point grads, leaving them all laughing out loud.
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Hegseth For all those cadets who’ve committed minor infractions or violations of the regulations of the United States Military Academy, for 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.
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