They knew they probably should not have been laughing.
Hundreds of National Guard members sat chuckling in their camouflage uniforms as former President Donald J. Trump tore into Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who served for 24 years in the National Guard. When Mr. Trump mocked him as “Tampon Tim” (a reference to a law he signed requiring schools to provide menstrual products to all students who need them) nervous laughter rippled through the crowd, then quickly dissipated.
“This group is a little more low-key than the ones I’m used to speaking before,” Mr. Trump observed.
It was Monday afternoon, and he was speaking at the National Guard Association’s annual conference in Detroit. There were people from all 50 states and various U.S. territories there. Those in uniform said they were prohibited from discussing politics with a reporter, but the crowd also included former service members who had gone to work for private contractors. These more casually dressed members of the defense sector were free to say what the others could not.
“I think it’s phenomenal that he’s out and about, speaking with the military,” said Walt Nichols, a 58-year-old from San Antonio who said he served for 26 years in the Texas National Guard and did three tours in Iraq (he is now a sales engineer for TacMed Solutions, which manufactures high-tech manikins). “We need him back,” Mr. Nichols said of Mr. Trump.
“We just found out this week that he was going to be here — we had no idea,” said Cliff Byrd, 45, a former Marine from Portsmouth, N.H., who now works for Vidarr Inc., which specializes in night vision technology. “As you can see, a lot of people came out for it.”
The National Guard Association says it has hosted at least one major-party candidate in every presidential election year since 1992. Vice President Kamala Harris declined an invitation because of a scheduling conflict. President Biden sent a video greeting. It was played shortly before Mr. Trump arrived. There was polite, scattered clapping.
An hour or so later, Kid Rock (who got his start in Detroit) appeared onstage in a white T-shirt and red “Make America Great Again” hat to introduce Mr. Trump. Then the former president spoke.
“You were always there for me,” he told the men and women in uniform. “And I’m always going to be there for you.” They burst into applause.
To his critics, this has always been one the more confounding aspects of Mr. Trump’s political persona — his appeal among members of the military.
He received five deferments from the military during the Vietnam War, including one for “bone spurs” in his feet. He ridiculed John McCain, the senator who was held prisoner during the Vietnam War. He got into a war of words with a Gold Star family during his first run for the White House. His former chief of staff, John Kelly, claimed Mr. Trump referred to veterans who died in war as “suckers” and “losers” (which Mr. Trump has adamantly denied) and did not wish to be seen in the presence of military amputees because it didn’t “look good” for him. At a fund-raiser in New Jersey this month, Mr. Trump said the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is awarded to civilians, was preferable to the Medal of Honor, because that is awarded to soldiers “in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”
But when he ran for president in 2015, Mr. Trump articulated an exhaustion with the seemingly endless wars the United States was engaged in, and he has clearly connected with many members of the military who feel overlooked or condescended to by Democrats.
Asked about Mr. Trump’s recent comments about the Medal of Honor, Mr. Byrd said, “I haven’t paid attention to that.” Mr. Nichols said simply, “Not going to comment on that one.”
“I take some of those comments with a grain of salt,” said Rod Skotty, a 67-year-old Navy veteran from Greene, N.Y., who works at a data analytics firm called Xiphos Partners. “What’s really important are the actions that he’s taken, and the results.”
“We could sit here and nitpick,” said Jillian Decair, 37, who said she was a member of the Air Force based in Reno, Nev. “But what’s the big picture?”
For the next hour, Mr. Trump laid it out: He claimed the planet was on the brink of World War III while Mr. Biden bounced from one vacation (in California) to another (in Rehoboth, Del.). He described his own style as “peace through strength.” He said everyone in the National Guard would get a raise if he won.
In 2020, minutes after Mr. Trump declared himself “your president of law and order,” the Guard began clearing people protesting police brutality from the streets of Washington (many Guard members struggled afterward with the role they had played in Mr. Trump’s crackdown). But when his own supporters ransacked the Capitol on Jan 6., 2021, he didn’t call on the National Guard. Eventually, others did. The Guard fortified the building and the city in preparation for Mr. Biden’s inauguration, sleeping in the hallways of the Capitol Complex (some were even made to camp out in an unheated parking garage).
Mr. Trump has ideas about how he would use the National Guard in a second term. “In places where there is a true breakdown of the rule of law, such as the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, the next president should use every power at his disposal to restore order,” he said at a conservative conference in Dallas in 2022. “If necessary, that includes sending in the National Guard or the troops.”
The crowd in Detroit on Monday seemed unconcerned by such plans. “Domestic operations is part of what we do,” shrugged Dick Smith, 72, an Air Force veteran from Helotes, Texas.
“I think it’s needed to clean up areas,” said Mr. Byrd. “America has to get back on the right footing.”
Mr. Trump brought out Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who served two combat tours in the Middle East. She left the Democratic Party and is now helping Mr. Trump prepare for his debate against Ms. Harris on Sept. 10. Ms. Gabbard told the audience how she’d been with Mr. Trump earlier that day at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where he honored troops who were killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. “I felt the sorrow that he shared with them in their loss,” said Ms. Gabbard.
The audience erupted into applause when Mr. Trump said “the voters are going to fire Kamala and Joe on Nov. 5” and that by noon on inauguration day he would have on his desk the resignations of every single senior official involved in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “You have to fire people when they do a bad job,” he said. “You’ve got to fire them, like, on ‘The Apprentice.’” The audience cheered louder at the mention of his old reality TV show.
“The problem is, when you fire somebody, they always end up writing a book about you,” Mr. Trump went on. “I get a book written about me by all these losers that get fired.” There have been many military men who have written about their time serving Mr. Trump, but he was most likely referring to his former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, whose new book, “At War With Ourselves,” was published this week. (“After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump,” Mr. McMaster writes, describing his former boss’s “ego and insecurities.”)
The audience sat rapt with attention until the end. Maybe it was a self-selecting crowd. Or maybe members of the National Guard just naturally lean right. Still, not everyone was entirely sold on what they’d heard.
“It was very interesting,” mused Bob Tibbetts, an army veteran from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who said he was an independent voter. “It was definitely a political speech.”
Did that bother him?
“A little bit,” he said. “The tone.”