Former President Donald Trump engaged in a roundtable discussion on Saturday at a Detroit church, where local community leaders raised concerns about current military policies, particularly focusing on transgender issues. The event saw community leaders urging Trump, should he be reelected, to reverse these woke policies within the military.

During the discussion, one community leader criticized President Joe Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which led to the deaths of 13 American soldiers. "I look at how Joe Biden became the president and allowed Afghanistan to collapse and allowed our soldiers to die—it angers me,” he said.

The individual went on to express his gratitude for Trump's respect for the military while he was President. “We had a president who loved our soldiers and we need to put our president back in office,” he continued as Trump sat beside him. 

In a notable moment, the same leader appealed to Trump, expressing concern over the perceived direction of military policy. "Please don’t allow our soldiers to walk around wearing red, high-heeled shoes," the leader remarked, drawing cheers from the attendees and eliciting a smile from the former president.

Since Biden took office, there has been a noticeable push within the military and Pentagon to support transgender ideology, a trend that has sparked criticism by many who believe the military is prioritizing left-wing politics over its actual objectives. When he first took office, Biden repealed a Trump executive order that prevented transgender-identifying military service members from having their sex reassignment surgeries paid for by the government. At the time of the reversal, the White House emphasized in a statement that "an inclusive force is a more effective force."

The Department of Defense also received backlash on social media last year when it highlighted a transgender-identifying Army major, applauding the biological man for living “her truth” and saying that his journey “inspires us all.” This prompted a plethora of social media users to accuse the DoD of straying too far from its duties of serving and protecting the country