Trump tells Liberty graduates it’s ‘outsiders who change the world’
LYNCHBURG, Va. — Donald Trump, the real estate mogul-turnedpresident, offered simple words of advice to university graduates Saturday as he urged them to follow their convictions, prepare to face criticism and relish the opportunity to be an “outsider.”
“It’s the outsiders who change the world,” Trump declared in his first commencement address to more than 18,000 graduates of Liberty University, a Christian school where the president was one of Trump’s earliest and most outspoken supporters during last year’s campaign.
Trump kept to a largely upbeat message during the roughly 30-minute speech.
Drawing parallels to what was widely viewed as a long shot presidential bid, Trump, who had never held elective office before winning the November election, urged the graduates to never stop fighting for what they believe in.
“Remember this: Nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy,” he said.
Trump was the second sitting president to address the university’s commencement ceremony; George H.W. Bush spoke in 1990.
Trump advised the graduates to “never quit” and to carry themselves with “dignity and pride.”
He also urged graduates to “treat the word ‘impossible’ as nothing more than motivation” and “relish the opportunity to be an outsider.”
“The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead,” he said. “You must keep pushing forward.”
Trump won an overwhelming 80 percent of the white evangelical vote during the election, and a recent Pew Research Center survey marking his first 100 days in office — a milestone reached on April 29 — found three-fourths of white evangelicals approved of his performance as president. Just 39 percent of the general public held the same view.
Liberty was founded in 1971 by televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. and is now led by his son, Jerry Falwell Jr. The school has more than 110,000 students, a vast majority of whom attend class online and only travel here for graduation.
Falwell endorsed Trump during the campaign and vouched for him to the evangelical community — even though he’s a trice-married celebrity who has stumbled when discussing religion and once vulgarly bragged about grabbing women without their permission.
“He deserves our respect and admiration for enduring relentless and often dishonest attacks from the media, the establishment on the left and the right and from academia,” Falwell said.
“I really don’t think any other president has done more for evangelicals and the faith community in four months than President Trump has.”
Trump is scheduled to address graduates of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., on Wednesday.