It was a speech unlike any other and just like every other.
The makings of it were strange and rare. Washington had raised a collective eyebrow last week when news began circulating that President Trump and his defense secretary had summoned the country’s military brass to a base in Virginia for an unexplained meeting. The timing was notable. This summons had come just as the president had started to act with a new aggressiveness to carry out his long-held and oft-stated desire to send the military into U.S. cities, ostensibly to reduce crime.
Several hundred military commanders turned up at Quantico on Tuesday morning. Some had flown in for it from places as faraway as Germany, Brussels, Japan and South Korea. They sat mostly in silence as Mr. Trump talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking.
He talked to the generals about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the infamous autopen. He talked about the media. He talked about tariffs and the border. He talked about the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner. He talked about not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned.
These were pretty much the same things he talked about a day earlier while standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the State Dining Room at the White House, which were the same things he talked about at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, which were the same things he talked about at Windsor Castle and at Chequers in England.
But if the generals were paying attention during minute 44 of the president’s speech Tuesday, they would have heard the fleeting but unmistakable sound of something new. Something different.
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The post Trump Gave the Military’s Brass a Rehashed Speech. Until Minute 44. appeared first on New York Times.
