Embrace the roll of outsider, Trump tells Liberty graduates
In his first commencement address as president, Donald Trump on Saturday drew a parallel between what he faces as a political outsider in Washington and what he said the Christian graduates of Libert y Universit y can expect to encounter in a secular world.
“Be tot ally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures,” Trump said. “Does that sound familiar, by the way?”
“Relish the opportunity to be an outsider,” he continued. “Embrace that label. Being an outsider is fine. Embrace the label because it’s the outsiders who change the world and who make a re a l a nd l a s t i ng di f f e rence. The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead.”
Trump’s address was short on scripture but c ast the president as a defender of the Christian faith — a mantle he assumed throughout the campaign.
“In America, we don’t worship government,” Trump declared at one point. “We worship God.”
Liberty University president and evangelical icon Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump in January 2016, calling him “a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again.”
Falwell’s backing boosted Trump’s previously sparse evangelical bona fides and was p a r t i c u l a r l y s i g n i f i - cant because many political observers had assumed that Falwell would support Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who had launched his campaign at Liberty 10 months earlier.
Trump’s relationship with Liberty’s student body has been rocky, however. When he spoke at the university a week before Falwell extended his endorsement, students laughed when Trump quoted a passage from “Two Corinthians.” The clumsy wording seemed to betray a lack of familiarity with what is more commonly referred to as the apostle Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth.
In the fall, after the release of a 2005 video recording on which Trump could be heard boasting about being able to “do anything” to women and get away with it, a student group called Liberty United Against Trump issued a strong rebuke of the candidate and Falwell.
“We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential c andidates in American history,” the group’s statement read. It added that Trump “received a pitiful 90 votes from Liberty students in Virginia’s primary election, a colossal rejection of his campaign.”
But the president received a warm reception Saturday from the roughly 50,000 commencement attendees — a record crowd for the university, he proudly declared. Falwell said Trump is the second sitting president to deliver a commencement address at Liberty; George H.W. Bush spoke in 1990.
More than 6,100 graduates attended Saturday’s ceremony, 68 percent of whom attended classes online and likely had never been to campus before. Following a torrential rainstorm, the sun made an appearance just as the grand procession began. Still, women’s heels sunk into wet grass and some opted for rain boots instead.
In a lighthearted moment, Trump listed some of the schools that Liberty’s football team will face in 2018, when it joins the top tier of collegiate competition. Opponents will include such traditional powers as Auburn, Virginia Tech and Ole Miss.
“Jerry, are you sure you know what you’re doing here?” Trump quipped.