Trump’s N-word joke falls flat as America’s top generals laugh awkwardly at gag about firing them

Donald Trump tried to soften his military leaders with a series of jokes that didn’t quite hit with the serious crowd of top brass. 

The president spared no expense by gathering every single general from across the world at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday. 

But his speech proved to be largely meandering as Trump found himself addressing a largely silent crowd of military generals rather than the raucous, overtly supportive audiences he typically commands.

The president bragged that liberals didn’t even put up a fight when he wanted to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War, claiming: ‘There’s been no fight… They’re sort of giving up. They’ve had it with Trump.’

He claimed the ‘first sign of wokeness’ in the military was in the mid 1900s when the War Department, which existed for 158 years, was renamed to the Department of Defense.

But those usual attack lines didn’t hit, Trump attempted to soften the stone-faced generals with a series of quips at the top of his remarks – including making a joke about the ‘N’ word.

‘There are two “n” words and you can’t use either of them,’ Trump said, telling the room of uniformed leaders that the second ‘N’ word is ‘nuclear.’

‘We can’t let people throw around that word. I call it the ‘N’ word,’ Trump insisted, explaining how he moved one or two submarines to the coast of Russia after the Kremlin spoke about nuclear-armed adversaries. 

Donald Trump deployed a series of jokes to soften his stoic top military leaders in an address at Marine Crops Base Quantico in Virginia today

A room of stone-faced generals and top enlisted members remained largely silent as Trump cracked some jokes with his top military brass

As he departed the White House for the unprecedented gathering, Trump suggested that some of his military leaders could be losing their jobs.

‘We have great people. We have our real warriors over there. And when they’re not good… you know what happened? We say you’re fired – get out,’ he told press before taking Marine One to the Marine Corps base.

‘If I don’t like somebody, I’m gonna fire them right on the spot,’ Trump insisted.

Still, during the top of his speech, Trump told his generals to ‘loosen up,’ and even ‘applause’ if they wanted to.

‘You can do everything you want, and if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room,’ Trump said, but then added: ‘Because there goes your rank, there goes your future.’

This earned him a hearty laugh from the auditorium of military leaders.

‘You just feel nice and loose because we’re all on the same team,’ he said.

The president claimed that he almost fired his War Secretary because he gave such a good speech.

Pete Hegseth, who spoke before Trump, warned America’s enemies not to ‘FAFO, which stands for f*** around and find out.’ 

‘From this moment forward the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: war fighting, preparing for war and preparing to win,’ he stated.

What started as a pep talk to military leadership turned into a list of new directives for his subordinates.

The War Secretary said that there would be a male standard of fitness for all service members because he was ‘tired of seeing fat troops.’ He insisted, however, that these new rules are ‘not about preventing women from serving.’

‘If women can make it, excellent, if they cannot — then so be it … it will also mean that weak men won’t qualify. This is combat,’ Hegseth said.

Some generals and military leaders displayed a smiles and chuckles at Trump’s jokes

Trump told the press before departing for Quantico today that he would ‘fire [generals] right on the spot’ if he didn’t like them