LYNCHBURG, Va. -- In his first commencement address as president, Donald Trump on Saturday drew a parallel between what he faces as a political outsider in Washington and what he said the Christian graduates of Liberty University can expect to encounter in a secular world.
"Be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures," Trump said. "Does that sound familiar, by the way?"
"Relish the opportunity to be an outsider," he continued. "Embrace that label. Being an outsider is fine. Embrace the label, because it's the outsiders who change the world and who make a real and lasting difference. The more that a broken system tells you that you're wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead."
Also Saturday, Trump said "we can make a fast decision" on a new FBI director, possibly by late this week, before he leaves on his first foreign trip since taking office. The Trump administration is looking to fill the position, which requires Senate confirmation, after Trump abruptly fired James Comey on Tuesday.
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Trump's Liberty University address was short on Scripture but cast the president as a defender of the Christian faith -- a mantle he assumed throughout the campaign.
"In America, we don't worship government," Trump declared at one point. "We worship God."
As Trump took the stage, a few young men in the audience swapped their graduation mortarboards for red "Make America Great Again" hats. The crowd of more than 50,000, the largest the university has ever seen at a commencement, as the president noted, gave him a standing ovation and then briefly chanted: "USA! USA! USA!" Trump is the second sitting president to deliver a commencement address at Liberty; George H.W. Bush spoke in 1990.
Liberty University president and evangelical figure Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump in January 2016, calling him "a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again."
Falwell's backing boosted Trump's previously sparse evangelical bona fides and was particularly significant because many political observers had assumed that Falwell would support Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who had launched his campaign at Liberty 10 months earlier.
Trump's relationship with Liberty's student body has been rocky, however. When he spoke at the university a week before Falwell extended his endorsement, students laughed when Trump quoted a passage from "Two Corinthians." The clumsy wording seemed to betray a lack of familiarity with what is more commonly referred to as the apostle Paul's "second" letter to the church in Corinth.
In the fall, after The Washington Post published a 2005 video recording on which Trump could be heard boasting about being able to "do anything" to women and get away with it, a student group called Liberty United Against Trump issued a strong rebuke of the candidate and Falwell.
"We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell's endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history," the group's statement read. It added that Trump "received a pitiful 90 votes from Liberty students in Virginia's primary election, a colossal rejection of his campaign."
Three students wrote an opinion piece in The Post, writing that "Trump is the antithesis of our values."
But the president received a warm reception Saturday. More than 6,100 graduates attended the ceremony.
In a lighthearted moment, Trump listed some of the schools that Liberty's football team will face in 2018, when it joins the top tier of collegiate competition. Opponents will include such traditional powers as Auburn, Virginia Tech and Ole Miss.
"Jerry, are you sure you know what you're doing here?" Trump quipped.
fbi candidates
Eight candidates to be the FBI's director were in line Saturday for the first interviews with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, at Justice Department headquarters.
When reporters asked whether he could announce his nominee by Friday, the day he departs for a trip to the Middle East and Europe, Trump replied, "Even that is possible."
The eight are among more than a dozen candidates Trump is considering, and they include several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.
"I think the process is going to go quickly. Almost all of them are very well-known," Trump said aboard the plane that took him to Lynchburg, Va. "They've been vetted over their lifetime essentially, but very well-known, highly respected, really talented people. And that's what we want for the FBI."
The first candidate to arrive was Alice Fisher, a top Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration.
Among those interviewed was Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the FBI's Richmond, Va., office. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe also interviewed for the permanent post despite his repeated willingness to break from White House explanations of Comey's ouster and its characterizations of the Russia investigation.
Also interviewed Saturday were Michael Garcia, a former prosecutor and associate judge on New York's highest court; GOP Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate leader and a former Texas attorney general; and U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson, a Bush appointee who struck down the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's health care law in 2010.
Frances Townsend, former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Bush, and former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., also met with Justice Department officials.
Rogers was endorsed by the FBI Agents Association, which said his diverse background makes him the best choice for the job. He is the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who also worked as an FBI special agent based in Chicago in the 1990s.
Fisher and Townsend were the only women on the list of candidates. The FBI has never had a female director. Each has worked in high-profile positions in the Justice Department.
Fisher formerly served as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Criminal Division. She faced resistance from Democrats during her confirmation over her alleged participation in discussions about detention policies at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba.
Among other roles, Townsend led the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which at the time handled requests for government surveillance warrants in terrorism and espionage cases.
Sessions has faced questions over whether his involvement in Comey's firing violates his pledge to recuse himself from investigations into Russian interference in the election. Some lawmakers have said the firing was an effort to stifle that FBI investigation.
Justice Department spokesman Sarah Isgur Flores said Sessions and Rosenstein are involved in the interviews because the FBI director reports to them as attorney general and deputy attorney general. They can make recommendations, but the president will ultimately make the hiring decision. FBI directors serve 10-year terms.
Although Trump's approval rating fell to 36 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, he found warm support in Liberty's football stadium.
Up in the stands was Henry Pollard, 64, who voted for Trump and was at Saturday's ceremony to see his youngest son graduate. He said he's frustrated that the media is so obsessed with Comey's firing, which he agrees with, and the investigation into ties between Trump's campaign and Russia.
"For nine months, they've talked about it. At some point, it has to stop," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Jenna Johnson, Callum Borchers and Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post and by Sadie Gurman and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/14/2017