Graduating West Point cadets isolate for 2 weeks ahead of Trump speech

WASHINGTON >> The graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point have lived in COVID-19 quarantine for the past two weeks, confined to their dorms, wearing masks and watching Zoom conferences on leadership as they wait for President Donald Trump to speak at their commencement Saturday.

Sent home in March because of the coronavirus, around 1,100 newly minted Army second lieutenants were ordered back to campus after the president abruptly announced in mid-April that he wanted to go through with his previously planned commencement address. The speech now comes during a breakdown in relations between the president and the nation’s top military leaders, who have vehemently objected to Trump’s threats to use active-duty troops across the country to quell largely peaceful protests against police brutality.

In preparation for the president, the West Point cadets have been divided into four groups of about 250, with strict orders not to mingle outside their cohort. They eat in shifts in the dining hall, with food placed on long tables by kitchen staff who quickly leave. There are four designated paths for cadets who want to go for socially distanced runs.

To ensure an infection-free graduation ceremony, the cadets were tested for the virus when they arrived back on campus. Fifteen of them initially tested positive but showed no symptoms, said Lt. Col. Christopher Ophardt, a West Point spokesman. The 15 did not transmit the virus to others and are now virus-free, Ophardt said, and will graduate with the others in their class.

The ceremony, streamlined from previous years, will include no friends or family and is to be held on the main parade ground on campus, called the Plain, around 10 a.m. Cadets will be required to wear masks as they march in and take their seats, spaced about 6 feet apart. Once seated, they will be allowed to unmask. Trump, who has never worn a mask in public, is to speak at 11 a.m.

The campus will be closed to outsiders at 6 a.m. Protests against the president are expected in the nearby community.

The cheering cadets in full military dress will serve as a backdrop for a reelection campaign in which Trump, who is faltering in the polls, seeks to project strength as commander in chief. The president is certain to mention that he has increased funding for the military, but he is not likely to mention his disputes with the defense secretary, Mark Esper, and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Milley apologized this week and considered resigning for his part in a photo opportunity with Trump after the authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse peaceful protesters near a church by the White House.

Esper has publicly rejected the president’s threats to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to use active-duty troops to quell racial violence. In an extraordinary rebuke, Jim Mattis, the president’s first defense secretary, who resigned in protest in 2018, condemned the president’s leadership.

“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” Mattis, a retired Marine four-star general, wrote after the church episode.

Army officials said privately this week that they were nervous about what the president might say after two weeks of racial tension that has roiled the country. Trump could wade further into the fierce debate over whether to strip military bases of Confederate names, as a Republican-led Senate panel demanded on Thursday. Or he could make a surprise announcement about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, they said.

Concern about the issue of police abuse have rippled through the campus in recent days. The West Point superintendent, Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, convened the entire senior class on the parade ground where commencement will take place to hear their concerns and talk about his own experiences as a black man in the Army.

Williams elaborated on those views in a letter to West Point alumni, faculty and cadets last week, saying that “during these unsettling times, I want us to recommit to eradicating racism from within our ranks by treating all people with dignity and respect.”

Residents who say they support the cadets and consider themselves part of the West Point community are organizing a protest on Saturday.

Laura Vetter, an instructor for 18 years at West Point before retiring last fall, said in a telephone interview that she planned to protest on Saturday and speak on behalf of any cadets who were not allowed to make political statements in uniform. “This commander in chief is such an abysmal exemplar of leadership that a statement has to be made.”

“Cadets do not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do,” Vetter said, citing West Point’s honor code.