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Graduates of the US Coast Guard Academy were treated to more than a speech by Donald Trump at their commencement.
The ceremony took a bizarre turn when the president asked one cadet named Matthew, who finished top of his class, to join him on stage.
‘Get up, I wanna see this guy,’ Trump said. ‘I hate good-looking men.’
Trump then told the crowd that another cadet, named Thomas, earned a ‘perfect score on every single fitness test’ while at the academy before inviting him up as well.
‘I wanna check him out,’ he said. ‘We’re not gonna fight with him, I’m not fighting him. Look at the muscles on this guy. Just hit him on the shoulder, hurt my hand. Was like hitting a rock.’
Trump went on to call up another cadet, Savannah, and added: ‘If I didn’t invite her up, they’d accuse me of discrimination.
‘I have to get her up here. She looks so fantastic.’
The US leader also spoke about advancing ‘America’s national resurgence’ and told graduates they ‘never leave an American behind’.
‘Wherever the duty call, whatever danger comes your way, you will fight, fight, fight, and you will win, win, win,’ he said.
Commencement speeches are meant to be non-partisan, but Trump went on to bash former Democratic president Joe Biden over his administration’s immigration policies and mentioned running for another term in office.
‘I’m gonna be here in ’28. Maybe I’ll be here in ’32 too. I don’t know. Maybe I will.’
It’s not the first time Trump has issued what appears to be a direct threat to the 22nd Amendment, which states that no person can be elected as President more than twice.
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Speaking at a small business summit earlier this month, the leader said: ‘When I get out of office in, let’s say, eight or nine years from now, I’ll be able to use it. I’ll be able to use it myself,’ referencing his ballroom.
He has previously ‘joked’ about running for life, reminding of authoritarians like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and China’s Xi Jinping.
The 22nd Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times in a row.
It reads: ‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.’
However, there have been questions over whether Trump would be able to find a loophole to this rule as his two terms were not concurrent.
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