As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect

Donald Trump, in a rare moment of solemn pledge, declared: “As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” In this vow is the recognition of a timeless truth: that the first duty of leadership is protection—not of a crown, nor of wealth, but of the people themselves, especially the vulnerable. To promise protection to the persecuted is to take upon oneself the mantle of guardian, to stand as a shield against hatred and destruction.

The heart of this statement lies in its defense of LGBTQ citizens, who through centuries have borne the wounds of cruelty, exclusion, and scorn. In naming them, the speaker affirms their dignity, declaring that they too are part of the body of the nation. To guard them against violence and oppression is not a matter of favor, but of justice. For the measure of any people’s greatness is found not in how it treats the powerful, but in how it safeguards the marginalized.

Yet the words also name the danger of hateful ideology, which, when joined to religion or politics, becomes a weapon of tyranny. History knows this well. The Third Reich, clothed in twisted ideology, not only slaughtered Jews, but also imprisoned LGBTQ men and women in camps marked by the pink triangle. Their suffering was long ignored, their voices silenced. Here lies the eternal warning: when hatred masquerades as righteousness, violence soon follows.

At the same time, this vow echoes the broader duty of nations to defend freedom beyond their borders. Just as America once stood against fascism in Europe, so too the modern world must resist ideologies that seek to erase human dignity. To invoke protection for LGBTQ citizens is to remind us that the struggle for freedom is not merely military, but moral; it is the fight to uphold the humanity of every soul against the forces of hate.

O children of tomorrow, remember this lesson: leaders may speak great words, but their weight lies in whether they are lived. Guard always against violence and oppression, whether it comes in foreign robes or in the garments of your own land. And remember that the true strength of a nation is not in its weapons, but in its protection of the weak, its sheltering of the despised, its refusal to bow before hatred. For when a people defends the dignity of all its children, then it rises nearer to justice, nearer to wisdom, nearer to the eternal law.