By Jarrett Renshaw
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump capped a week-long celebration of his first 100 days – interrupted by a shakeup of his national security team – with a trip to deep-red Alabama on Thursday to kick off graduation weekend at the state’s most prominent university.
“Congratulations to the class of 2025. Roll Tide,” Trump told hundreds of University of Alabama graduates gathered at the campus’s Coleman Coliseum for the president’s first commencement of his second term.
“Roll, Tide” is a reference to a slogan of support and pride in the school’s football team, known as the Crimson Tide, a perennial national powerhouse.
Trump, who has made his war with elite private universities in Democratic-run states a pillar of his education policy, selected the public university in heavily Republican Alabama as the backdrop for his speech.
He used the event to celebrate the school and its graduates, offer some advice and tout his policy successes such as slowing illegal immigration and stomping out transgender participation is collegiate sports.
“Men should not play in women’s sports,” Trump declared, drawing some of the biggest applause of the evening.
The speech comes as the nation’s economy and Wall Street are showing signs of stress under Trump’s trade wars, and as Trump ousted his national security adviser Mike Waltz in the first major shakeup of Trump’s inner circle since he took office in January.
Trump offered the graduates some lessons from his own lifetime “spent building dreams and beating the odds.”
“I beat a lot of odds, lot of odds,” he said. “Oh gee, I’m president, how did that happen?” He counseled the graduates to “give it your all,” “smash through everything,” “think big” and “work hard.”
Trump won Alabama in 2004 with a commanding 64% of the vote and the state has been home to a number of his trademark large rallies over the past decade, including his earliest rallies that packed stadiums in a sign of his future political strength.
Nick Saban, who won six national football championships at the University of Alabama before stepping down in 2024, took the stage to a raucous, standing applause to introduce Trump. Despite his celebrity status, Saban humorously lamented his secondary status on Thursday.
“I feel like I am the warm-up band for the Rolling Stones,” Saban said.
While the White House has described Trump’s speech as a commencement address, it is actually a special event that was created before graduation ceremonies that begin Friday. Graduating students have the option of attending the event, but it is not required.
Trump’s visit to the university drew protesters who staged a counter rally hosted by the College Democrats several miles away. It drew more than 500 people, according to organizers.
One-time presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke of Texas and former U.S. Senator Doug Jones, the last Democrat to hold statewide office in Alabama, were slated to address the rally, called a “Tide Against Trump” — a play on the university’s nickname.
“I’m not a politically active person, but I can’t just sit around and do nothing as President Trump destroys the country,” said Allison Schorr, a 20-year-old University of Alabama student.
(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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