For his first commencement speech as president, Donald Trump returned Saturday to an Evangelical Christian university where his bid for president elicited mixed reactions from students during the 2016 election.
"Being an outsider is fine", President Trump said.
"As long as I am your president, no one is ever going to stop you from practicing your faith", President Trump told the graduates.
"Remember this, nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy", Mr Trump said.
Trump kept to a largely upbeat message during the roughly 30-minute speech at the private Christian school in southwest Virginia. "Demand the best from yourself and be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures".
"[I want] to bring Christ back into our nation and into our schools, since we don't have him in schools rights now; it's just silent prayers", she said, "I would love to see the prayers back into schools because it makes a big difference".
A recent Pew Research Center survey marking Trump's first 100 days in office, a milestone reached on April 29, found three-quarters of white evangelicals approved of his performance as president while just 39 percent of the general public held the same view.
Busloads of commencement attendees turning into the LU campus watched as demonstrators waved signs such as "Impeach Trump" and "Mr. Hate Leave My State" while in unison calling out phrases like "Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go".
"From the most humble roots, you have become a powerhouse in both education and sports", Trump said.
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In an op-ed published by The Washington Post, Dustin Wahl, Paige Cutler, and Alexander Forbes, the Liberty University students behind the "Liberty United Against Trump" letter, characterized Trump as "amoral and self-centered".
On May 21 Vice President Mike Pence will address the graduates of Notre Dame, the high-profile Catholic university which bucked its tradition this year by not inviting the recently-elected president to give its commencement speech.
"I want to thank you", Trump said to the 50,000 in attendance.
Trump's speech was unremarkable: Some platitudes, a few Trumpisms, and a compliment or two for Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.as a reward for his early endorsement.
"Having a sitting president make his first commencement address at your university is awesome", said junior John Wood. He urged graduates to "embrace the label" of being an outsider and to not "swim downstream so easily with the current".
Trump spoke at Liberty University's commencement ceremony on Saturday, and had some interesting things to say about this country, decidedly founded on secular documents that postulated the notion of freedom to worship however one pleases.
But the majority of his speech was devoted to lofty rhetoric about challenging a "broken system" and persevering in the "critics and doubters". "What will future Americans say we did in our brief time here on Earth?"
Presidents Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did so during their first year in office.
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