President Donald Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, visited North Carolina on Friday.
The president began his remarks with praise for Michael Whatley, the candidate he has endorsed in the upcoming Senate race, and a warning that if Republicans don’t maintain a Congressional majority in the 2026 midterms, Fort Bragg’s name could be changed again.
In his address to special forces troops and families, Trump claimed that military recruiting is up under his administration and noted the name change from Department of Defense to Department of War.
“Now, we have a real force and you see that in Iran and what we did in Venezuela,” he said.
He praised those in the audience, calling them “out of central casting.”
Trump said his administration had raised recruiting standards across the armed forces. “If you want to get into the military, you gotta have a little muscle,” he said.
“It’s based on merit now. As long as I’m president, we will be the best led, best trained, best equipped, most disciplined and most elite fighting force the world has ever seen.”
So effusive was Trump’s praise for Fort Bragg that he suggested he and the first lady could move to the area.
The President and first lady met first at Pope Army Airfield with military families and members of the special forces who carried out an operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken from their home on a military base in January during a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela.
Maduro was accused of leading a “a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.”
In a January public hearing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Maduro was a “major U.S. national security threat in the Western Hemisphere,” adding that the country was safer and more secure as a result.
“We are certainly better off today in Venezuela than we were four weeks ago, and I think and hope and expect that we’ll be better off in three months and six months and nine months than we would have been had Maduro still been there,” Rubio said.
