America’s D-Day tribute this year was a national embarrassment

At 2:54 p.m. local time in Normandy, France, Pete Hegseth stood among the graves of thousands of American service members who never came home. He was there to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. But instead of focusing on the sacrifice, courage, and humanity of the young men who crossed an ocean to confront fascism, Hegseth transformed a solemn remembrance into yet another political rally. Standing on ground made sacred by those who fought and died for freedom, he compared modern immigration by sea to an invasion, bringing his anti-immigrant rhetoric into one of the most hallowed places in the Western world.

Based on the events of 6-6-2026

The Breakdown:

• Hegseth: "Different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?"
• Why where he said it matters more than what he said
• How he used sacred ground to launder far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric, lifting the exact vocabulary of June 6, 1944, and reassigning it to migrants
• The men being honored had themselves crossed an ocean to liberate a continent
• The contradiction of honoring past allies as heroes while lecturing their descendants about an alleged invasion
• Hegseth claimed America saved Western civilization, but Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, and Canada on September 10, 1939, by its own choice
• The United States remained officially neutral until Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, more than two years after the war began in Europe
• The original America First Committee, founded in 1940, fought to keep the United States out of the war against Hitler
• America First grew to more than 800,000 members, and its most famous voice, Charles Lindbergh, accepted a medal from Hermann Göring in 1938
• The ADL urged Trump to reconsider the slogan because of its history of antisemitism, xenophobia, and isolationism
• Hegseth quoted Reagan: "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction"
• Why he has the threat pointed in exactly the wrong direction
• The oldest authoritarian move: wrap yourself in the flag of the people who defeated the last threat, quote the heroes, stand at their graves
• How Trump marked D-Day: a fake music video of himself set to an auto-tuned song chanting "Everywhere I go, they love Donald Donald Trump"
• Cartoonish characters meant to represent people from Mexico, Italy, the Middle East, Africa, China, and India, with Trump's face made of pepperoni and scenes of him stuffing his face with tacos
• On a day built entirely on sacrifice, the Commander in Chief's contribution was a song about how much the world adores him
• The four American women buried in that cemetery: Mary Bankston, Mary Barlow, and Dolores Browne of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female Army unit to serve overseas in that war
• Elizabeth Richardson, a Red Cross volunteer, who earned her place among America's honored dead

The men who stormed those beaches walked past the bodies of the friends who fell before them, through water turned red, and kept moving forward anyway. They did not do it alone. They did it with allies. We have been and always will be better together. An evil man has taken the wheel of our government. But he does not have the soul of the country, he never has, and he never will.

This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I'm Heather Telaney Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country. Yesterday at 2.54 p.m. local time in Normandy, France, Pete Hegseth stood among the graves of thousands of American service members who never came home. He was there to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, to honor the Allied troops who stormed those beaches and helped liberate Europe from one of the darkest chapters in human history. But instead of focusing on the sacrifice, courage, and humanity of the young men who crossed an ocean to confront fascism, Hegaseth transformed a solemn remembrance into yet another political rally. Standing on ground made sacred by those who fought and died for freedom, he compared modern immigration by sea to an invasion, bringing his anti-immigrant rhetoric into one of the most hollowed places in the Western world. Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? He said. I pray not, and I believe not. In that moment, the most disturbing part was not simply what he said, it was where he chose to say it. He could have said those same words from a podium anywhere else in the world, and they would have been ugly, but he chose to say them on a bluff above Omaha Beach over the graves of thousands of Americans who crossed an ocean to destroy fascism. And that choice is what turned ugly into desecration. It was an attempt to borrow the legitimacy of the dead, to wrap a modern political grievance in the sacrifice of a generation that fought and died for something far greater than fear. The ground was not the backdrop to his message. The ground was the message. He needed the dead, he needed the moral authority of men and women who can no longer speak, and he used it to give way to something unworthy of their sacrifice. What he did was use sacred ground to launder far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric. And he built the comparison not with a single sentence, but with the language itself, because earlier in the same speech, he spoke of the men who landed on the beaches, and he warned that in the years since much of the West has grown comfortable. Then he turned and the same words came back aimed in a different direction. Different European beaches, he said, are now stormed by dangerous ideologies. Beaches stormed. The exact vocabulary of June 6, 1944, lifted from the history being honored and laid over migrants arriving in boats. The word invasion, which on the ground carries the weight of liberation, he reassigned to desperate people crossing the Mediterranean. He placed migrants in the rhetorical role the Nazis occupied in actual history. And he cast closed borders in the role of the liberators. That is the inversion. That is the deception hiding inside the ceremony. There was another layer to what Hagseth was doing too. And the very people being honored that day had themselves crossed an ocean to reach those beaches. Americans, Canadians, British troops, and Allied forces, and I want to stop and acknowledge Australian and New Zealand forces as well. Those full Allied forces arrived from distant shores to liberate a continent from tyranny. Their mission was liberation, not conquest. And the circumstances could not be more different. But standing on a coastline forever defined by men arriving from across the sea, Hegseth chose that same imagery to portray today's migrants as a threat. He took one of history's most celebrated examples of people crossing oceans in the name of freedom and repurposed it into language to feel fear of those crossing oceans in search of safety, opportunity, or survival. It was a comparison that turned history inside out. And that wasn't the only contradiction. Before he turned to immigration, Hagseth spent part of the speech praising the Allied coalition that fought on those beaches. He spoke about the real Allies making real sacrifices and named the countries we stood shoulder to shoulder with: Great Britain, Canada, France, Norway, Poland, and others. He honored the nations that bled with us, that lost sons and daughters alongside our own. And then moments later used the same stage to lecture their descendants about an alleged invasion and their failure to defend their countries. He delivered that warning as a guest in France, standing in a cemetery on French soil that exists because France chose to preserve the memory of American sacrifice. There is something deeply heartbreaking and devastating about that. The allies of the past are treated as heroes, and the allies of the present are treated as obstacles, failures, or cautionary tales. And somehow, on a day meant to honor partnership and shared sacrifice, that contradiction never seemed to occur to him. Then he told the crowd that America saved Western civilization. And in that moment I found myself feeling more sad than angry. Because D-Day is not the story of one nation rescuing the world. It is the story of countries setting aside their differences and sacrificing together in the face of evil to stand in Normandy and reduce that history to another exercise in American exceptionalism feels like a betrayal on the very lesson those beaches are supposed to teach. And the historical record simply does not support the story he was trying to tell. Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3rd, 1939. Canada declared war on September 10, 1939. A week later, and entirely by its own choice, because the statute of Westminster meant Britain's declaration did not mind it. Canada had not been attacked. Canada was under no obligation. Canada went anyway. The United States remained officially neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and entered the war in Europe only after Germany declared war on the United States four days later. By then, Britain and Canada had already been fighting fascism for nearly two years. America's contribution was immense. It was decisive. Americans sacrificed enormously once we entered the war, but the victory being commemorated in Normandy was never an American victory alone. It belonged to an alliance. It belonged to every nation that fought, suffered, resisted, and died. And there is something profoundly sad about standing among the graves of those who understood that truth and using their memory to tell its smaller, more self-serving version of the story. Because underneath that speech was a much larger story this movement has been trying to tell for years, America First. America First is not a neutral patriotic phase. Its most infamous chapter was the name of the movement that fought to keep the United States out of the war against Hitler. The America First Committee, founded in 1940, grew to more than 800,000 members, and its most famous voice might be Charles Lindbergh, the man who admired Nazi Germany and accepted a medal from Hermann Gring in 1938. When Donald Trump revived the slogan, the Anti-Defamation League urged him to reconsider pointing to its history of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and isolationism. The original movement did not want America to fight fascism. It wanted America to stay out of the fight. It collapsed only after Pearl Harbor made neutrality impossible. And while America First was an American slogan, it echoed a broader current that was spreading through much of the Western world in the 1930s. Nationalist movements across Europe promoted the same basic idea that a nation's only obligation was to itself, that alliances were burdens, that outsiders were threats, and that suffering beyond its borders was someone else's problem. The language varied from country to country. The targets changed, but the underlying worldview was remarkably similar. And that is what makes hearing echoes of it in Normandy so unsettling, because the men buried on those cliffs are there precisely because that argument lost. They are buried there because America eventually rejected isolationism, crossed an ocean, and joined a fight that many America-first advocates wanted to avoid. And to stand above their graves while celebrating a movement built around the slogan feels less like patriotism and more like forgetting the very lesson their sacrifice was meant to teach. He quoted Ronald Reagan, too. He said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. That is not passed to the next generation in the bloodstream, but must be defended by each one. And the thing is, that sentence is true. Freedom does die when a generation fails to guard it. He simply has the threat pointed in exactly the wrong direction. He stood at a monument to people who died, stopping authoritarianism, and warned the world about the boats of migrants while he himself is building the thing those men died fighting for. He is the face of the danger he was claiming to warn against. And that too is the oldest move in the authoritarian playbook. They never announce themselves as the threat. They wrap themselves in the flag of the people who defeated the last one. They quote the heroes, they stand at graves, they borrow the language of freedom precisely because they intend to take it. The man telling us he is guarding the door is the one already inside the house. Days like D-Day reveal what people value. They strip away the prepared speeches and expose what is actually in a person's heart and mind. They remind us who sees history as a sacred responsibility and who sees it as a backdrop, who understands sacrifice and who is consumed by themselves. And if you want to know how the president of the United States chose to mark the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, all you had to do is look at what he shared with the world yesterday morning on his personal social media platform, True Social. He didn't share tribute or a prayer. Instead, he posted a fake music video of himself set to an auto-tuned song chanting, Everywhere I Go, They Love Donald Donald Trump. The video cycles through cartoonish made-up characters meant to represent people from Mexico, Italy, the Middle East, Africa, China, and India, each first circling back to the same garbage. And I don't use that term lightly. I don't know how else to describe what I watched. Trying to promote and pretend that everybody loves Donald Trump all over the world. There were scenes of his face made out of pepperoni on a pizza. I'm not joking. Another is supposed to be in Mexico where he stuffs his face with tacos. And another one he rides a motorcycle through a busy street in India. There are even scenes of him doing that awkward, you know, dance in front of the White House before cutting to him, holding the flag on the moon. There were more grotesque scenes after that, each one somehow more ridiculous and self-indulgent than the last. And on a day built entirely on sacrifice, on men and women who gave their lives so that the word freedom would mean something, the commander-in-chief's contribution was a song about how much the world adores him. That is the whole of him in 60 seconds, not the graves or sacrifice or courage, just himself. And I keep coming back to the word heartbreaking, because it is heartbreaking, all of it. And it's almost unimaginable to sit with what this day must have felt like for the families of the people buried in that cemetery. The sons and daughters, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren of the men and women who crossed that water and never came home. I've I've told my own story of being there and the power it is, and the feeling of looking out and seeing so many crosses and stars and understanding what it means to be amongst such bravery and sacrifice. Something that even being there and trying to understand it, and then acknowledging that we never can feel that because it holds so much weight. And I think about the people watching what is being done to the country, those people died for. And then watching Pete Heggseth stand over the graves and turn the memorial into a sermon for the very thing their loved ones were killed fighting for. We lost the best of us that day, and in the days that followed. They made the ultimate sacrifice that will lie in that ground for eternity. And the men running this country right now are not worthy of standing over them. We must refuse to allow them to rewrite history. We need more people to see the destruction they are causing to our country and how they are treating our war dead. We need to keep sharing what they are doing here online and in our communities. We need to talk to our neighbors because very few people, if presented the truth and not the White House propaganda, would be okay with any of this. And we need the truth to reach them now, ahead of the midterms. On the 82nd anniversary of one of the bravest acts in modern history, the men who stormed those beaches walked past the bodies of the friends who fell before them, through water turned red from blood, and kept moving forward anyway. They eventually helped liberate hundreds of thousands from the camps, and then they went home and they built families and communities and mostly never spoke of what they had seen. And they did not do this alone. They did it with allies. We have been and always will be better together. And it wasn't just that they paid the ultimate price either, because buried among the crosses and stars on that same hollow ground are four American women. Three of them, Mary Bankston, Mary Barlow, and Dolores Brown, served in the Central Post Directory Battalion, the only all-black, all-female army unit to serve overseas in that war. The fourth Elizabeth Richardson was not a soldier at all, but a Red Cross volunteer whose sacrifice earned her a place among America's honored dead. What is happening today is that an evil man has taken the wheels of our government and he is spreading the rot, but he does not have the soul of this country. He never has and he never will. What this regime never accounted for is the American spirit, and it has not been killed. It is still here just like it was 62 years ago. That is why I still have hope for America and you should too. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day, and together we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.