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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump promised on Monday (Feb 6) to spend lavishly on the United States’ military in an effort to maintain peace in “our troubled, troubled times”, telling troops and commanders that he would give them the tools to prevail against the Islamic State and thwart its attempts to strike the United States.
“We will make a historic financial investment in the armed forces of the United States and show the entire world that America stands with those who stand in defense of freedom,” Mr Trump said at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, home to the military’s Central Command and Special Operations Command.
“Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland,” he added, claiming without elaborating that the “dishonest press does not even want to report” on terrorist attacks throughout Europe.
“It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that,” he added.
His criticism of the news media appeared to ignore the vast amount of reporting on violence committed by the Islamic State and its supporters in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.
The 12-minute speech to service members was Mr Trump’s first opportunity to address troops publicly since he became commander-in-chief, and he cited the large share of military votes he drew as proof of service members’ loyalty to him. While exit polls showed that about 60 per cent of military personnel supported Mr Trump in the November election, members of the armed forces swear loyalty to their commander-in-chief, regardless of party.
“We need strong programmes so that people that love us and want to love our country and will end up loving our country are allowed in, not people that want to destroy us and destroy our country,” Mr Trump said, an apparent reference to his executive order on Jan 27 suspending the United States’ refugee programme, blocking Syrian refugees indefinitely and barring any entrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
On NATO, Mr Trump, who has said in the past that the alliance is “obsolete”, tempered his message, arguing that he was focused on ensuring that it is well funded.
“We strongly support NATO; we only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing — many of them have not been even close,” he said.
Mr Trump said he would ensure that military personnel had the tools they needed to do their jobs, asserting that “we’ve been depleted” and vowing that this would not continue during his presidency.
“We’re going to be loading it up with beautiful new planes and beautiful new equipment,” Mr Trump said of MacDill Air Force Base. “You’ve been lacking a little equipment. We’re going to load it up — you’re going to get a lot of equipment.”
The president also asserted that he had saved more than US$700 million (S$988.55 million) on the F-35 fighter jet programme “when I got involved in the negotiation”, arguing that defense contractors including Lockheed Martin and Boeing had “cut their prices” at his insistence.
Mr Trump was apparently referring to a decision by Lockheed on Friday to cut the price on a new contract for 90 of the radar-evading fighters by an additional US$7.4 million per jet. Officials with the military and with Lockheed said the president’s intervention had helped to speed the negotiations and had contributed to the cost savings. But some savings will come from increased manufacturing efficiencies as the production rate grows, they added, making it difficult to quantify how much can be attributed to Mr Trump’s prodding.
The president, though, seemed focused on Monday on his own role. At one point, he recognised Governor Rick Scott of Florida in the audience and noted that Mr Scott had endorsed him, which “makes him a better friend of mine”.
“You know if they don’t endorse, believe me, if you’re ever in this position, it’s never quite the same,” Mr Trump told the troops. “You can talk, but it never means the same.” THE NEW YORK TIMES